Process-Oriented Organization Modeling and Analysis Based on Constraints

This paper presents a formal framework for process-oriented modeling and analysis of organizations. The high expressivity of a sorted predicate logic language Lpr used for specification allows representing a wide range of process-related concepts (e.g., tasks, processes, resources), their characteristics and relations over them, which are described in the paper. Furthermore, every organization is characterized by a set of structural and behavioral constraints, which are classified in this paper. In the proposed framework these constraints form a logical theory Tpr in Lpr, i.e. a set of formulae in Lpr. A process-oriented model is correct iff it satisfies Tpr. The techniques for establishing correctness are implemented and described in the paper. The introduced framework is a part of a general framework for organization modeling and analysis

Formal analysis of executions of organizational scenarios based on process-oriented specifications

Abstract This paper presents various formal techniques for analysis of executions of organizational scenarios based on specifications of organizations. Organizational specifications describe (prescribe) ordering and timing relations on organizational processes, modes of use of resources, allocations of actors to processes, etc. The actual execution may diverge from scenarios (pre)defined by a specification. A part of techniques proposed in this paper is dedicated to establishing the correspondence between a formalized execution (i.e., a trace) and the corresponding specification. Other techniques proposed in this paper provide the analyst with wide possibilities to evaluate organizational performance and to identify bottlenecks and other inefficiencies in the organizational operation. For the proposed formal analysis the order-sorted predicate Temporal Trace Language (TTL) is used and it is supported by the dedicated software tool TTL Checker. The analysis approaches considered in this paper are illustrated by a case study in the context of an organization from the security domain. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Synthesizing Distributed Constrained Events from Transactional Workflow Specifications

Workflows are the semantically appropriate composite activities in heterogeneous computing environments. Such environments typically comprise a great diversity of locally autonomous databases, applications, and interfaces. Much good research has focused on the semantics of workflows, and how to capture them in different extended transaction models. Here we address the complementary issues pertaining to how workflows may be declaratively specified, and how distributed constraints may be derived from those specifications to enable local control, thus obviating a centralized scheduler. Previous approaches to this problem were limited and often lacked a formal semantics. 1 Introduction Workflows are composite, semantically appropriate activities that execute in heterogeneous environments. In such environments, extremely common in practice, the challenge is to interoperate properly without violating the autonomy of the components. Workflows address this challenge [5]. Transactional workfl..

On Computer-Aided Methods for Modeling and Analysis of Organizations

Treur, J. [Promotor