Set-based analysis of structured workflow definition

Abstract

An error-comprising workflow definition of mission critical business process might incur serious problems to an enterprise. Although workflow designer is responsible for the error-comprising workflow definitions, workflow system has to be equipped with an intelligent workflow modeling tool preventing workflow designers from specifying error-comprising workflow definitions. Faults and mistakes of process designers have to be detected and reported to them by the tool at workflow build time. Access conflicts and improper specification of exceptions are two typical examples of such an error-comprising workflow definition. In this paper, we develop an access conflict detection and an uncaught exception detection techniques. A simple workflow definition language, named SWDL, is developed and the techniques are successfully developed on SWDL using Set Constraint System. With slight modifications and scope restrictions, the proposed techniques can be used in any workflow definition language either by translating it into SWDL or by referring to the techniques for the developing its own techniques. This indicates that general conventional programming language analysis techniques can be used in the analysis of workflow definitions by introducing an intermediate workflow definition language and developing analysis techniques on it.