Verification of workflow task structures: A Petri-net-based approach

While many workflow management systems have emerged in recent years, few of them provide any form of support for verification. Consequently, most workflows become operational before they have been thoroughly checked. This frequently results in runtime errors which need to be corrected on-the-fly at, typically, prohibitive costs. This paper shows how verification of a typical process control specification, which is at the heart of most workflow specifications, can benefit from state-of-the-art Petri-net based analysis techniques. To illustrate the applicability of the approach, a verification toot has been developed. This tool can download and verify the correctness of process definitions designed with Staffware, one of the leading workflow management systems. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.