SMAWL: A SMAll Workflow Language based on CCS

Abstract

prolonged debate in the workflow community about the relative suitability of Petri nets versus π-calculus as a formal foundation for workflow languages. Here we demonstrate how to build a workflow language based on CCS (a predecessor of π-calculus). To facilitate comparison with other approaches SMAWL is designed to be able to express the same 20 patterns that originally led to the design of the Petri net-based workflow language YAWL by van der Aalst and ter Hofstede. After an initial example of a SMAWL program, some design considerata are discussed, and the constructs of the language are presented along with excerpts of the compositional source-level translation to CCS.