Temporal Workflow Process Model and Its Soundness Verification

Abstract

为了提高工作流产品对信息时效性的处理能力,通过将时间维引入工作流概念空间,对构成工作流的基本概念及概念间的关系进行了全面的时间属性扩展,提出了时态工作流的概念.在前期对时态信息表示及演算、时态工作流元模型研究的基础上,提出了一种能够综合描述过程、资源、案例、时间四维信息的时态工作流过程模型TPWF-net,并证明了TPWF-net与WF-net的结构等价性、自由选择同步TPWF-net和良构TPWF-net的合理性可以在多项式时间内判定等结论.在此理论的指导下,提出了结构化建模的思想,并阐述了基于结构化简的TPWF-net模型合理性验证的方法.时态工作流能够更加全面地描述和分析工作流领域的时间相关问题,开发的一个时态工作流引擎原型已在一些应用研究性项目中得到了验证.;To improve workflow products, handling of the validity of information, temporal workflow is presented as a new concept by introducing time into workflow concept model as a dimension, which leads to time attributes being assigned to all workflow basic concepts and relationships between them. Based on the research on the expression and calculation of temporal information and the process meta-model of temporal workflow, through mapping the concepts in the meta-model into the elements of Petri Net, a temporal workflow process model, TPWF-net, is presented, which can describe the process, resource, case and their time attributes in one model synthetically. Then, some theorems are proved, which include structural equipollence between TPWF-net and WF-net, and the soundness of free-choice synchronal TPWF-net. It is also proved that well-structured TPWF-net can be decided in polynomial time. Finally, a structured modeling method of TPWF-net and a structure-simplified method of model verification are presented. Temporal workflow makes it more comprehensive to describe and analyze the time-related problems in workflow area. A temporal workflow engine prototype based on TPWF-net has been implemented and applied in some projects supported by local government.