Siphon-based deadlock prevention policy for interorganizational WorkFlow net design

Abstract

In this paper, an approach based on Deadlock avoidance of Interorganizational WorkFlow nets is proposed to deal with Deadlock situations in interorganizational business processes. Interorganizational business processes are modeled by Interorganizational WorkFlow nets. Deadlock situations in interorganizational business processes comes generally from message ordering mismatches between several business processes. Within the Petri net theory, a Deadlock situation is characterized as a zero marking of a Siphon. After detecting and controlling the Siphon structures that lead to Deadlock situations in Interorganizational WorkFlow nets, a method for the design of Interorganizational WorkFlow nets free of Deadlock is proposed. In particular, the basic principle is to define new WorkFlow nets shared between the original workflow processes that allow one to remove the scenarios responsible for the Deadlocks.