Soundness of workflow nets: classification, decidability, and analysis
TL;DR: It is shown that the eight soundness notions described in the literature are decidable for workflow nets, however, most extensions will make all of these notions undecidable.
Abstract: Workflow nets, a particular class of Petri nets, have become one of the standard ways to model and analyze workflows. Typically, they are used as an abstraction of the workflow that is used to check the so-called soundness property. This property guarantees the absence of livelocks, deadlocks, and other anomalies that can be detected without domain knowledge. Several authors have proposed alternative notions of soundness and have suggested to use more expressive languages, e.g., models with cancellations or priorities. This paper provides an overview of the different notions of soundness and investigates these in the presence of different extensions of workflow nets. We will show that the eight soundness notions described in the literature are decidable for workflow nets. However, most extensions will make all of these notions undecidable. These new results show the theoretical limits of workflow verification. Moreover, we discuss some of the analysis approaches described in the literature.
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TL;DR: The practical relevance of BPM and rapid developments over the last decade justify a comprehensive survey and an overview of the state-of-the-art in BPM.
Abstract: Business Process Management (BPM) research resulted in a plethora of methods, techniques, and tools to support the design, enactment, management, and analysis of operational business processes. This survey aims to structure these results and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in BPM. In BPM the concept of a process model is fundamental. Process models may be used to configure information systems, but may also be used to analyze, understand, and improve the processes they describe. Hence, the introduction of BPM technology has both managerial and technical ramifications and may enable significant productivity improvements, cost savings, and flow-time reductions. The practical relevance of BPM and rapid developments over the last decade justify a comprehensive survey.
739 citations
TL;DR: This survey draws up a systematic inventory of approaches to customizable process modeling and provides a comparative evaluation with the aim of identifying common and differentiating modeling features, providing criteria for selecting among multiple approaches, and identifying gaps in the state of the art.
Abstract: It is common for organizations to maintain multiple variants of a given business process, such as multiple sales processes for different products or multiple bookkeeping processes for different countries. Conventional business process modeling languages do not explicitly support the representation of such families of process variants. This gap triggered significant research efforts over the past decade, leading to an array of approaches to business process variability modeling. In general, each of these approaches extends a conventional process modeling language with constructs to capture customizable process models. A customizable process model represents a family of process variants in a way that a model of each variant can be derived by adding or deleting fragments according to customization options or according to a domain model. This survey draws up a systematic inventory of approaches to customizable process modeling and provides a comparative evaluation with the aim of identifying common and differentiating modeling features, providing criteria for selecting among multiple approaches, and identifying gaps in the state of the art. The survey puts into evidence an abundance of customizable process-modeling languages, which contrasts with a relative scarcity of available tool support and empirical comparative evaluations.
358 citations
Cites background from "Soundness of workflow nets: classif..."
...Hiding corresponds to abstraction, i.e. the execution of an activity becomes unobservable, but the path the activity is in, is still possible....
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...A typical requirement is soundness [van der Aalst et al. 2011], i.e., it should always be possible to complete any process instance properly....
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TL;DR: The authors may not be able to make you love reading, but production workflow concepts and techniques will lead you to love reading starting from now.
Abstract: We may not be able to make you love reading, but production workflow concepts and techniques will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.
350 citations
01 Jul 2012
TL;DR: This article introduces process mining as a new research field and summarizes the guiding principles and challenges described in the manifesto.
Abstract: Over the last decade, process mining emerged as a new research field that focuses on the analysis of processes using event data. Classical data mining techniques such as classification, clustering, regression, association rule learning, and sequence/episode mining do not focus on business process models and are often only used to analyze a specific step in the overall process. Process mining focuses on end-to-end processes and is possible because of the growing availability of event data and new process discovery and conformance checking techniques.Process models are used for analysis (e.g., simulation and verification) and enactment by BPM/WFM systems. Previously, process models were typically made by hand without using event data. However, activities executed by people, machines, and software leave trails in so-called event logs. Process mining techniques use such logs to discover, analyze, and improve business processes.Recently, the Task Force on Process Mining released the Process Mining Manifesto. This manifesto is supported by 53 organizations and 77 process mining experts contributed to it. The active involvement of end-users, tool vendors, consultants, analysts, and researchers illustrates the growing significance of process mining as a bridge between data mining and business process modeling. The practical relevance of process mining and the interesting scientific challenges make process mining one of the “hot” topics in Business Process Management (BPM). This article introduces process mining as a new research field and summarizes the guiding principles and challenges described in the manifesto.
279 citations
TL;DR: This paper presents the ETM algorithm which allows the user to seamlessly steer the discovery process based on preferences with respect to the four quality dimensions, and shows that all dimensions are important for process discovery.
Abstract: Process discovery algorithms typically aim at discovering process models from event logs that best describe the recorded behavior. Often, the quality of a process discovery algorithm is measured by quantifying to what extent the resulting model can reproduce the behavior in the log, i.e. replay fitness. At the same time, there are other measures that compare a model with recorded behavior in terms of the precision of the model and the extent to which the model generalizes the behavior in the log. Furthermore, many measures exist to express the complexity of a model irrespective of the log. In this paper, we first discuss several quality dimensions related to process discovery. We further show that existing process discovery algorithms typically consider at most two out of the four main quality dimensions: replay fitness, precision, generalization and simplicity. Moreover, existing approaches cannot steer the discovery process based on user-defined weights for the four quality dimensions. This paper presents the ETM algorithm which allows the user to seamlessly steer the discovery process based on preferences with respect to the four quality dimensions. We show that all dimensions are important for process discovery. However, it only makes sense to consider precision, generalization and simplicity if the replay fitness is acceptable.
156 citations
References
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01 Apr 1989
TL;DR: The author proceeds with introductory modeling examples, behavioral and structural properties, three methods of analysis, subclasses of Petri nets and their analysis, and one section is devoted to marked graphs, the concurrent system model most amenable to analysis.
Abstract: Starts with a brief review of the history and the application areas considered in the literature. The author then proceeds with introductory modeling examples, behavioral and structural properties, three methods of analysis, subclasses of Petri nets and their analysis. In particular, one section is devoted to marked graphs, the concurrent system model most amenable to analysis. Introductory discussions on stochastic nets with their application to performance modeling, and on high-level nets with their application to logic programming, are provided. Also included are recent results on reachability criteria. Suggestions are provided for further reading on many subject areas of Petri nets. >
10,755 citations
"Soundness of workflow nets: classif..." refers background or methods in this paper
...It is easy to see that invariants are less useful for nets with reset arcs because these arcs destroy the nice linear algebraic properties that follow from the marking equation [62, 65]....
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...Note that all the classical liveness and boundedness preserving reduction rules [12, 13, 62] that do not depend on the initial marking also preserve the other notions of soundness....
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...Even in this simple setting it is not possible to use the coverability graph [62] to decide soundness....
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...We can apply the liveness and boundedness preserving reduction rules of [12, 13, 62] to get this result, because a WF-net is classical sound if and only if the corresponding short-circuited net is live and bounded [1, 2]....
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...The construction of a coverability graph is one of the standard approaches for analyzing classical Petri nets [62, 65]....
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TL;DR: This paper introduces workflow management as an application domain for Petri nets, presents state-of-the-art results with respect to the verification of workflows, and highlights some Petri-net-based workflow tools.
Abstract: Workflow management promises a new solution to an age-old problem: controlling, monitoring, optimizing and supporting business processes. What is new about workflow management is the explicit representation of the business process logic which allows for computerized support. This paper discusses the use of Petri nets in the context of workflow management. Petri nets are an established tool for modeling and analyzing processes. On the one hand, Petri nets can be used as a design language for the specification of complex workflows. On the other hand, Petri net theory provides for powerful analysis techniques which can be used to verify the correctness of workflow procedures. This paper introduces workflow management as an application domain for Petri nets, presents state-of-the-art results with respect to the verification of workflows, and highlights some Petri-net-based workflow tools.
2,862 citations
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01 Jul 2003
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe a number of workflow patterns addressing what they believe identify comprehensive workflow functionality and provide the basis for an in-depth comparison of commercial workflow management systems.
Abstract: Differences in features supported by the various contemporary commercial workflow management systems point to different insights of suitability and different levels of expressive power. The challenge, which we undertake in this paper, is to systematically address workflow requirements, from basic to complex. Many of the more complex requirements identified, recur quite frequently in the analysis phases of workflow projects, however their implementation is uncertain in current products. Requirements for workflow languages are indicated through workflow patterns. In this context, patterns address business requirements in an imperative workflow style expression, but are removed from specific workflow languages. The paper describes a number of workflow patterns addressing what we believe identify comprehensive workflow functionality. These patterns provide the basis for an in-depth comparison of a number of commercially available workflow management systems. As such, this paper can be seen as the academic response to evaluations made by prestigious consulting companies. Typically, these evaluations hardly consider the workflow modeling language and routing capabilities, and focus more on the purely technical and commercial aspects.
2,553 citations
Book•
17 Oct 2011
TL;DR: The third volume of a definitive work on coloured Petri nets as discussed by the authors contains a detailed presentation of 19 applications of CP-nets across a broad range of application areas, including a security system, ATM networks, audio/video systems, transaction processing, ISDN services, VLSI chips, document storage, distributed programming, electronic funds transfer, a naval vessel, chemical processing, nuclear waste management, and many more.
Abstract: This is the third volume of a definitive work on coloured Petri nets. It contains a detailed presentation of 19 applications of CP-nets across a broad range of application areas, including a security system, ATM networks, audio/video systems, transaction processing, ISDN services, VLSI chips, document storage, distributed programming, electronic funds transfer, a naval vessel, chemical processing, nuclear waste management, and many more. Most of the projects were carried out in an industrial setting, and in each case the original authors have cooperated with the author and approved the new presentation. The author has taken care to unify the terminology and the CPN diagrams and to ensure that the background knowledge required has been provided in the first two volumes of the work.
2,041 citations
Book•
19 Sep 2007
TL;DR: Matthias Weske argues that all communities involved need to have a common understanding of the different aspects of business process management, and details the complete business process lifecycle from the modeling phase to process enactment and improvement, taking into account all different stakeholders involved.
Abstract: Business process management is usually treated from two different perspectives: business administration and computer science. While business administration professionals tend to consider information technology as a subordinate aspect in business process management for experts to handle, by contrast computer science professionals often consider business goals and organizational regulations as terms that do not deserve much thought but require the appropriate level of abstraction. Matthias Weske argues that all communities involved need to have a common understanding of the different aspects of business process management. To this end, he details the complete business process lifecycle from the modeling phase to process enactment and improvement, taking into account all different stakeholders involved. After starting with a presentation of general foundations and abstraction models, he explains concepts like process orchestrations and choreographies, as well as process properties and data dependencies. Finally, he presents both traditional and advanced business process management architectures, covering, for example, workflow management systems, service-oriented architectures, and data-driven approaches. In addition, he shows how standards like WfMC, SOAP, WSDL, and BPEL fit into the picture. This textbook is ideally suited for classes on business process management, information systems architecture, and workflow management. This 2nd edition contains major updates on BPMN Version 2 process orchestration and process choreographies, and the chapter on BPM methodologies has been completely rewritten. The accompanying website www.bpm-book.com contains further information and additional teaching material.
1,825 citations
"Soundness of workflow nets: classif..." refers background in this paper
...Early examples of process-aware information systems were called WorkFlow Management (WFM) systems [AH04, GHS95, JB96, LR99, Mue04, Wes07 ]....
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