An Integrated Approach for Workflow Process Modeling and Analysis Using UML and Petri Nets

Abstract

工作流程管理系統是用來定義、協同、管理和執行複雜商業活動的一個軟體系統。此外，工作流程管理系統支援巨大且異質性分散的執行環境。在所有工作流程技術中，程序定義是工作流程管理系統的核心部分。基於工作流程管理組織的標準，我們提出以UML為程序定義方法。我們的方法包括了以下四個階段：應用使用情況圖來建構程序的功能需求；應用分纇圖來建構系統資訊結構；應用活動圖來表示程序的控制流；和將使用情況圖轉換為活動圖。在本文中，我們將分纇圖和活動圖轉變為顏色派翠網路和古典派翠網路。此外、派翠網路提供了許多的性質分析技術可以用來分析工作流程的正確性，像有限性、存活性、公平性和可到達性等，以及時序的性質，像終於、從今以後、直到等。

Workflow management system is a software system that defines, coordinates, manages, and executes complex business activities. Furthermore, workflow management system supports large and heterogeneous distributed execution environments. Of all the workflow techniques, process definition is one of the kernel parts. Based on the workflow management coalition (WfMC) standard, we propose an UML approach for process definition. Our approach consists of four phases: Applying use case diagram for process functional requirements modeling; Applying class diagram for constructing process information structure; Applying activity diagram for process control flow; and transformation of use case diagram to activity diagram. In this paper, we then transform class, and activity diagrams into Coloured Petri nets, and classical Petri nets, respectively. In addition, Petri nets provide a variety of property analysis techniques for analyzing the correctness of workflow process, such as boundedness, liveness, fairness, and reachability etc and temporal properties, such as eventually, henceforth, until etc.