Methods and apparatus for designing a workflow process using inheritance

The disclosed system empowers technical and non technical users to author logical business objects, author intelligent business forms, and create automated workflows. The logical business objects include data definitions and methods from existing and new data sources. An object broker interprets the business object definition and brokers data/information and method calls to the data sources. The intelligent business forms are created by an information worker in a rich web-based tooling environment. Each form is intelligent enough to recognize other forms that it might co-exist with on a single page, as well as how to react based on events that occur on these related forms. The automated workflow tools include process discovery features that assist users during the process identification phase. The tools assist both technical and non technical users to identify processes within the organization, including supporting solution artifacts such as forms, rules, actions, outcomes and business objects involved. Process modeling features include the ability to combine defined artifacts into a process model that can be published into a runtime environment where it can be executed and used by business users in the organization.