Workflow Model Soundness Analysis&Application

Workflow process modeling and the process verification in modeling phase are highly noted in both research and industry area, because the cost for modifying errors is very high after a process definition becomes operational. However, the modeling of a workflow process is a complicated and error-prone procedure. Especially, with workflows plays a more and more important role in business process reengineering, there is an urgent demand for verification research and analysis of complex process. Therefore, to improve the model theory has become an important research direction.This dissertation tries to make contributions on structural soundness of wokflow model. The first part of this dissertation proposes an algorithm for mapping XPDL to Petri nets according to Aalst' task structure. Because XPDL has been a standard of workflow process description, it is made the mapping procedure can be independent on modeling method. In the second part, workflow model is analyzed by studying the Petri theory on structural and behavioral properties. An algorithm is given to validate the soundness of the workflow model according to the characteristics of Wfnet. The complexity of this algorithm is lower than that of the classic Petri's, so it has practical values.The research result in this paper not only adapt to business process modeling field but also has much academic guidance and referenced value to other software field. An example of composing web services by Petri is depicted in the end of this dissertation, then we can use the theory mentioned above to analysis the soundness property of a composed web service.