Net-structure-based conditions to decide compatibility and weak compatibility for a class of inter-organizational workflow nets

Abstract

Inter-organizational workflow nets (IWF-nets) can well model the interactions among multiple processesby sending/receiving messages. Compatibility and weak compatibility are crucial properties for IWF-nets.The latter guarantees that a system is deadlock-free and livelock-free while the former also guarantees that ithas no dead tasks. Our previous work proved that the (weak) compatibility problem is PSPACE-complete forsafe IWF-nets. This paper defines a class of IWF-nets in which some simple circuits are allowed. Necessaryand sufficient conditions are presented to decide compatibility and weak compatibility for this class, and theyare dependent on the net structures only. Algorithms are developed based on these conditions. In addition, weshow that the traditional net structures like siphon cannot be easily used to decide the (weak) compatibility ofIWF-nets.