Set-based access conflict analysis of concurrent workflow definition

Abstract

An error-comprising workflow definition might provoke serious problems to an enterprise especially when it is involved with mission critical business processes. Concurrency of workflow processes is known as one of the major sources causing such an invalid workflow process definition. So the conflicts caused by concurrent workflow processes should be considered deliberately when defining concurrent workflow processes. If we can analyze the conflicts immanent in concurrent workflow definition prior to runtime, it will be very helpful to business process designers and many other users of workflow management systems. In this paper, we propose a set-based access conflict analysis method to detect all the possible access conflicts prior to the execution of the workflow process, The method is composed of two phases. In the first phase, it generates set constraints from a structured workflow definition. In the second phase, it solves the set constraints obtained from the first phase. Using the information about potential conflicts detected by our analysis, workflow designers can prevent the serious problems that can be raised by conflicts in runtime and they can convince whether their workflow definitions are free from such conflicts or not. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.