The Study Of Petri-Net Based Workflow Management Systems And Its Application In Web-based B2B Business System

Economic globalization has become the main trend of the development of the world economy and E-commerce, especially the B2B electronic business that is carry on through the Internet, is regarded as the strategic selection to push the development of economy in many countries around the world. Due to the rapid development of E-commerce and the complication of the information management system in enterprises, new requirements are generated for the management as well as the operation mode of the enterprises. Workflow comes into force just under this situation and has become an important means of re-engineering and process automation for enterprises during their operation.By far workflow has not yet been widely used in China. Since most middle-sized and mini-sized corporation didn't set up a complete and independent e-business system, this becomes a serious obstacle to the development of economy. This paper analyzes the workflow technology and also constructes a model of the web-based B2B business system, which is based on an electronic data interchange system that is used in the central system of the Shanghai Commerce Electronic Business Center and administrated by Shanghai Science and Technology Committee (SSTC). This paper is mainly focus on the following issues: Summarize the basic workflow concepts, its reference model and cany out procedures (or flows). Analyze and compare several typical workflow models. Probe into the Petri-net based modeling technology and discuss the application of mapping Petri net to workflow based on the WorkFlow-net as well as how to improve it on high level Petri net technology. Construct the whole frame of web-based B2B business system, and build the system model based on the improved WorkFlow-net as welll as discussed several key technologies on the implementation of the system. Discuss the coordination mechanisms for multi-workflow environments and built the implement prototype.