Adaptive workflow nets for grid computing

Existing grid applications commonly use workflows for the orchestration of grid services. Existing workflow models however suffer from the lack of adaptivity. In this paper we define Adaptive Grid Workflow nets (AGWF nets) appropriate for modeling grid workflows and allowing changes in the process structure as a response to triggering events/exceptions. Moreover, a recursion is allowed, which makes the model especially appropriate for a number of grid applications. We show that soundness can be verified for AGWF nets

О разрешимости бездефектности для сетей потоков работ с неограниченным ресурсом

In this work, we consider the modeling of workflow systems with Petri nets. A resource workflow net (RWF-net) is a workflow net supplied with an additional set of initially marked resource places. Resources can be consumed and/or produced by transitions. We constrain neither the intermediate nor final resource markings, hence a net can have an infinite number of different reachable states. An initially marked RWF-net is called sound if it properly terminates its work and, moreover, an increase of the initial resource does not violate its proper termination. An unmarked RWF-net is sound if it is sound for some initial resource. In this paper, we prove the decidability of both marked and unmarked soundness for a restricted class of RWF-nets with a single unbounded resource place (1-dim RWF-nets). We present an algorithm for computing the minimal sound resource for a given sound 1-dim RWF-net.Рассматривается моделирование схем потоков работ (workflow) при помощи сетей Петри. Определяется класс сетей потоков работ с ресурсами (RWF- сетей) — обычных workflow-сетей, в которых дополнительно добавлено множество ресурсных позиций, содержащих какую-то начальную разметку (начальный ресурс). Ресурсы могут уничтожаться и производиться при срабатываниях переходов. Мы не накладываем ограничений ни на промежуточные, ни на финальные ресурсные разметки, поэтому сеть может порождать бесконечное множество различных достижимых состояний. RWF-сеть с данной начальной ресурсной разметкой называется бездефектной, если, во-первых, она всегда корректно завершает свою работу, и, во- вторых, любое увеличение начального ресурса не нарушает свойства корректного завершения. Неразмеченная RWF-сеть бездефектна, если она бездефектна при некоторой начальной ресурсной разметке. В данной работе доказана разрешимость обоих вариантов бездефектности для важного подкласса RWF- сетей — сетей с одномерным ресурсом (одной ресурсной позицией). Также представлен алгоритм вычисления наименьшего бездефектного ресурса

Verification of soundness and other properties of business processes

In this thesis we focus on improving current modeling and verification techniques for complex business processes. The objective of the thesis is to consider several aspects of real-life business processes and give specific solutions to cope with their complexity. In particular, we address verification of a proper termination property for workflows, called generalized soundness. We give a new decision procedure for generalized soundness that improves the original decision procedure. The new decision procedure reports on the decidability status of generalized soundness and returns a counterexample in case the workflow net is not generalized sound. We report on experimental results obtained with the prototype implementation we made and describe how to verify large workflows compositionally, using reduction rules. Next, we concentrate on modeling and verification of adaptive workflows — workflows that are able to change their structure at runtime, for instance when some exceptional events occur. In order to model the exception handling properly and allow structural changes of the system in a modular way, we introduce a new class of nets, called adaptive workflow nets. Adaptive workflow nets are a special type of Nets in Nets and they allow for creation, deletion and transformation of net tokens at runtime and for two types of synchronizations: synchronization on proper termination and synchronization on exception. We define some behavioral properties of adaptive workflow nets: soundness and circumspectness and employ an abstraction to reduce the verification of these properties to the verification of behavioral properties of a finite state abstraction. Further, we study how formal methods can help in understanding and designing business processes. We investigate this for the extended event-driven process chains (eEPCs), a popular industrial business process language used in the ARIS Toolset. Several semantics have been proposed for EPCs. However, most of them concentrated solely on the control flow. We argue that other aspects of business processes must also be taken into account in order to analyze eEPCs and propose a semantics that takes data and time information from eEPCs into account. Moreover, we provide a translation of eEPCs to Timed Colored Petri nets in order to facilitate verification of eEPCs. Finally, we discuss modeling issues for business processes whose behavior may depend on the previous behavior of the process, history which is recorded by workflow management systems as a log. To increase the precision of models with respect to modeling choices depending on the process history, we introduce history-dependent guards. The obtained business processes are called historydependent processes.We introduce a logic, called LogLogics for the specification of guards based on a log of a current running process and give an evaluation algorithm for such guards. Moreover, we show how these guards can be used in practice and define LogLogics patterns for properties that occur most commonly in practice

Checking properties of adaptive workflow nets

n this paper we consider adaptive workflow nets, a class of nested nets that allows more comfort and expressive power for modeling adaptability and exception handling in workflow nets. We define two important behavioural properties of adaptive workflow nets: soundness and circumspectness. Soundness means that a proper final marking (state) can be reached from any marking which is reachable from the initial marking, and no garbage will be left. Circumspectness means that the upper layer is always ready to handle any exception that can happen in a lower layer. We define a finite state abstraction for adaptive workflow nets and show that soundness and circumspectness can be verified on this abstraction

Checking properties of adaptive workflow nets

n this paper we consider adaptive workflow nets, a class of nested nets that allows more comfort and expressive power for modeling adaptability and exception handling in workflow nets. We define two important behavioural properties of adaptive workflow nets: soundness and circumspectness. Soundness means that a proper final marking (state) can be reached from any marking which is reachable from the initial marking, and no garbage will be left. Circumspectness means that the upper layer is always ready to handle any exception that can happen in a lower layer. We define a finite state abstraction for adaptive workflow nets and show that soundness and circumspectness can be verified on this abstraction

Checking properties of adaptive workflow nets

In this paper we consider adaptive workflow nets, a subclass of nested nets that allows more comfort and expressive power for modelling adaptation and exception handling in workflow nets. We define two important behavioral properties of adaptive workflow nets: sound- ness and circumspectness. Soundness means that a proper final marking (state) can be reached from any marking which is reachable from the initial marking, and no garbage will be left. Circumspectness means that the upper layer is always ready to handle any exception that can happen in a lower layer. Since adaptive workflow nets can have an infinite state space, we use an abstraction to reduce the problem of verifying soundness and circumspectness to a finite one

Checking properties of adaptive workflow nets

In this paper we consider adaptive workflow nets, a subclass of nested nets that allows more comfort and expressive power for modelling adaptation and exception handling in workflow nets. We define two important behavioral properties of adaptive workflow nets: sound- ness and circumspectness. Soundness means that a proper final marking (state) can be reached from any marking which is reachable from the initial marking, and no garbage will be left. Circumspectness means that the upper layer is always ready to handle any exception that can happen in a lower layer. Since adaptive workflow nets can have an infinite state space, we use an abstraction to reduce the problem of verifying soundness and circumspectness to a finite one