Context-aware workflow management for virtual enterprises based on coordination of agents

Although virtual enterprises (VE) make it possible for small flexible enterprises to form a collaborative network to respond to business opportunities through dynamic coalition and sharing of the core competencies and resources, they also pose new challenges and issues. Creation of VE involves dynamically established partnerships between the partners and relies on a flexible coordination scheme. The dynamic organizations formed in VE present a challenge in the development of a new methodology to dynamically allocate re-sources and deliver the relevant information to the right people at the right time. A key issue is the development of an effective workflow management scheme for VE. Multi-agent systems (MAS) provide a flexible architecture to deal with changes based on dynamic organization and collaboration of autonomous agents. Despite the extensive studies and research results on MAS, development of a design methodology to support coordination and operations is critical to the success and adoption of VE. The objectives of this research are to propose a design methodology to facilitate coordination and development of context-aware workflow management systems and achieve effective resource allocation for VE based on MAS architecture. To achieve these objectives, a scheme for coordination of agents is proposed. Petri net models are used in the coordination scheme to describe workflows and capture resource activities in VE. The interactions between agents lead to a dynamic workflow model for VE. Based on the aforementioned model, we propose architecture to dynamically generate context-aware graphical user interface to guide the users and control resource allocation based on the state of VE. An order management example is used throughout this paper to illustrate the proposed design methodology.     

WF-net模型到PNML的转换方法研究与实现

Petri网标记语言PNMI是一种基于XM工的支持不同Petri网工具之间文件交换的标准格式,对于解决不同Petri网变种之间的互操作性问题具有重要意义。工作流网WF-net是用于工作流系统建模和定性、定量分析的重要形式化技术之一。工作重点是将WF-net模型转换为PNML格式。首先,在标准PNML元模型的基础上,通过元素扩展提出WF-net的PNML元模型。然后,依据元模型,提出WF-net模型中各元素到PNMI格式的转换规则,包括起始/结束库所转换、四种触发器转换和四种分支/合并结构转换。最后设计并实现了WF-net描述到PNML描述自动转换的工具软件。这些工作为Petri网标准交换格式的制定做了有力的探索。     

Petri网标记语言

Petri网标记语言（PNML）是一种基于XML语言的Petri网文件交换标准,用于实现Petri网工具的互操作性。综合介绍了PNML标准化进程和PNML的核心支撑技术,详细阐述了PNML体系结构各个组成部分及元模型中各个组成对象,借助PNK工具实现一个P／T网模型实例,根据元模型分析对应的PNML文件中的库所、变迁和弧等对象标签的含义,最后分析了PNML在工作流模型与矢量图转换等领域的研究状况,指出了下一步研究方向。     

Collaborative composition of processes in holonic manufacturing systems

Although it provides a flexible architecture to deal with changes and uncertainties, holonic manufacturing systems (HMS) also pose challenges in design and implementation. A challenge is to design a problem solving environment to guide the holons in HMS such that the decisions made by the individual holons as a whole collaboratively compose the production processes for the tasks. The objective of this paper is to propose a problem solving environment for the composition of minimal cost processes in HMS. Given a specific product type and due date, the problem is to dynamically compose a complete process in HMS to process the product by the due date. To achieve the objective, we combine multi-agent systems technology with Petri nets in this paper. We first propose architecture and a two-layer contract net protocol to describe the negotiation between order holons, product holons and resource holons in HMS. To determine whether it is feasible for a set product holons and resource holons to compose a process for an order holon, we propose Petri net models to capture the workflows and activities in product holons and resource holons, respectively. To optimize the cost in the composed manufacturing process, the concept of activity-based costing is adopted to assign the cost of the activities to Petri nets. The advantages of our design methodology include specification of workflows and resource activities with PNML to minimize the cost. To realize the two-layer contract net protocol relies on a mechanism for a holon to discover the services provided by other holons. We proposed a scheme for publication and discovery of holon services based on FIPA compliant multi-agent system platform. Based on the service publication and discovery scheme, interactions between holons with the two-layer contract net protocol can be realized. We develop a HMS system to solve the process composition problem.     

Petri网关联矩阵与PNML描述之间的转换

PNML是一种基于XML的Petri网文件交换格式,支持多种Petri网类型,并提供了一种在不同Petri网工具间交换Petri网模型的途径。文中讨论了Petri网的关联矩阵和PNML描述之间的转换,给出了如何使用DOMAPI解析PNML文件及实现转换过程的技术细节。     

基于Petri网工作流的动态访问控制

访问控制是信息系统的一项重要安全保护机制,它是通过限制主体对资源的访问权限,从而保证资源的可用性、完整性和可信性的机制。此种机制通过访问控制矩阵实现,但现在的访问控制矩阵是静态的,它们不随时间的变化而改变。文中通过访问控制矩阵和基于Petri网的工作流结合提出了动态访问控制。访问权限是根据工作流的状态来赋予的,这样减少了对资源和数据的误操作,提高了系统访问的安全性和适时性。文中的工作流模型采用Petri网来描述,Petri网具有坚实的数学分析基础,很适合于表述工作流这样的离散模型。     

Soundness-preserving reduction rules for reset workflow nets

The application of reduction rules to any Petri net may assist in its analysis as its reduced version may be significantly smaller while still retaining the original net’s essential properties. Reset nets extend Petri nets with the concept of a reset arc, allowing one to remove all tokens from a certain place. Such nets have a natural application in business process modelling where possible cancellation of activities need to be modelled explicitly and in workflow management where such process models with cancellation behaviours should be enacted correctly. As cancelling the entire workflow or even cancelling certain activities in a workflow has serious implications during execution (for instance, a workflow can deadlock because of cancellation), such workflows should be thoroughly tested before deployment. However, verification of large workflows with cancellation behaviour is time consuming and can become intractable due to the state space explosion problem. One way of speeding up verification of workflows based on reset nets is to apply reduction rules. Even though reduction rules exist for Petri nets and some of its subclasses and extensions, there are no documented reduction rules for reset nets. This paper systematically presents such reduction rules. Because we want to apply the results to the workflow domain, this paper focusses on reset workflow nets (RWF-nets), i.e. a subclass tailored to the modelling of workflows. The approach has been implemented in the context of the workflow system YAWL.     

Can I find a partner? Undecidability of partner existence for open nets

We study open nets as Petri net models of web services, with a link to the practically relevant language WS-BPEL. For those nets, we investigate the problem of operability which we consider as fundamental as the successful notion of soundness for workflow nets, i.e., Petri net models of business processes and workflows. While we could give algorithmic solutions to the operability problem for subclasses of open nets in earlier work, this article shows that the problem is in general undecidable.     

基于反应型的Petri网工作流业务过程建模

传统的基于令牌机制的Petri网工作流模型虽然被广泛应用,但不能完整准确地反映工作流引擎运行时的实际情况。在充分考虑了系统运行时的实际场景之后,提出了一种基于反应型机制的Petri网工作流模型;然后分析了标准Petri网工作流模型到反应型Petri网工作流模型的转换方法和实现步骤,并给出了验证的思路。     

SEAM: A state-entity-activity-model for a well-defined workflowdevelopment methodology

Current conceptual workflow models use either informally defined conceptual models or several formally defined conceptual models that capture different aspects of the workflow, e.g., the data, process, and organizational aspects of the workflow. To the best of our knowledge, there are no algorithms that can amalgamate these models to yield a single view of reality. A fragmented conceptual view is useful for systems analysis and documentation. However, it fails to realize the potential of conceptual models to provide a convenient interface to automate the design and management of workflows. First, as a step toward accomplishing this objective, we propose SEAM (State-Entity-Activity-Model), a conceptual workflow model defined in terms of set theory. Second, no attempt has been made, to the best of our knowledge, to incorporate time into a conceptual workflow model. SEAM incorporates the temporal aspect of workflows. Third, we apply SEAM to a real-life organizational unit's workflows. In this work, we show a subset of the workflows modeled for this organization using SEAM. We also demonstrate, via a prototype application, how the SEAM schema can be implemented on a relational database management system. We present the lessons we learned about the advantages obtained for the organization and, for developers who choose to use SEAM, we also present potential pitfalls in using the SEAM methodology to build workflow systems on relational platforms. The information contained in this work is sufficient enough to allow application developers to utilize SEAM as a methodology to analyze, design, and construct workflow applications on current relational database management systems. The definition of SEAM as a context-free grammar, definition of its semantics, and its mapping to relational platforms should be sufficient also, to allow the construction of an automated workflow design and construction tool with SEAM as the user interface     

XRL/Woflan: Verification and Extensibility of an XML/Petri-Net-Based Language for Inter-Organizational Workflows

In this paper, we present XRL/Woflan. XRL/Woflan is a software tool using state-of-the-art Petri-net analysis techniques for verifying XRL workflows. The workflow language XRL (eXchangeable Routing Language) supports cross-organizational processes. XRL uses XML for the representation of process definitions and Petri nets for its semantics. XRL is instance-based, therefore, workflow definitions can be changed on the fly and sent across organizational boundaries. These features are vital for today's dynamic and networked economy. However, the features also enable subtle, but highly disruptive, cross-organizational errors. On-the-fly changes and one-of-a-kind processes are destined to result in errors. Moreover, errors of a cross-organizational nature are difficult to repair. XRL/Woflan uses eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) to transform XRL specifications to a specific class of Petri nets, and to allow users to design new routing constructs, thus making XRL extensibe. The Petri-net representation is used to determine whether the workflow is correct. If the workflow is not correct, anomalies such as deadlocks and livelocks are reported.     

Petri net-based context modeling for context-aware systems

The context-aware services require to efficiently perceive not only the user requirements but also the context of the environment to provide customized services to the user. To efficiently develop the context-aware applications a systematic methodology correctly specifying the relation among dynamically changing contexts is essential. Here the context model simplifying the manipulation of complex contexts is a key accessor for the specification and analysis of the service. Among various modeling approaches such as timed automata (Tang and You in Intell Automat Soft Comput 16(4):605–619, 2010), workflow (Rosemann et al. in Understanding context-awareness in business process design, 2010), Petri net (PN) (J?rgensen et al. in Innovat Syst Softw Eng 5(1):13–25, 2009), etc. developed for context-aware system, the PN-based approach has been recognized as one of the most effective one. In this paper we identify the issues of how the contexts are modeled and what kinds of the requirements needs to be considered in the context processing. We then discuss various Petri net (PN)-based modeling methodologies concerning the five important features for context processing: relationships and dependencies, time constraint, resource constraint, usability of modeling formalisms, and context identification. The study reveals that the approach effectively allowing both the time and resource constraints in the model while supporting other important properties needs to be developed further for accurately assess the context-aware systems. Also, the expandability and scalability issue need to be investigated.     

An uncoordinated asynchronous checkpointing model for hierarchical scientific workflows

Scientific workflow systems often operate in unreliable environments, and have accordingly incorporated different fault tolerance techniques. One of them is the checkpointing technique combined with its corresponding rollback recovery process. Different checkpointing schemes have been developed and at various levels: task- (or activity-) level and workflow-level. At workflow-level, the usually adopted approach is to establish a checkpointing frequency in the system which determines the moment at which a global workflow checkpoint – a snapshot of the whole workflow enactment state at normal execution (without failures) – has to be accomplished. We describe an alternative workflow-level checkpointing scheme and its corresponding rollback recovery process for hierarchical scientific workflows in which every workflow node in the hierarchy accomplishes its own local checkpoint autonomously and in an uncoordinated way after its enactment. In contrast to other proposals, we utilise the Reference net formalism for expressing the scheme. Reference nets are a particular type of Petri nets which can more effectively provide the abstractions to support and to express hierarchical workflows and their dynamic adaptability.     

Distributed simulation of modular time Petri nets: An approach and a case study exploiting temporal uncertainty

This paper proposes an approach to modular modelling and simulation of complex time-critical systems. The modelling language is represented by Merlin and Farber’s Time Petri Nets (TPNs) augmented with inhibitor arcs and modular constructs borrowed from the Petri Net Markup Language (PNML) interchange format. Analysis techniques depend on Temporal Uncertainty Time Warp (TUTW), a time warp algorithm capable of exploiting temporal uncertainty in general optimistic simulations over a networked context. A key feature of the approach is the fact that TPN models naturally exhibit a certain degree of temporal uncertainty which the TUTW control engine can exploit to achieve good speedup without a loss in the accuracy of the simulation results. The developed TUTW/TPN kernel is demonstrated by modelling and simulation of a real-time system example.A preliminary version of this paper was presented at 38th SCS Annual Simulation Symposium, April 4–6, 2005, San Diego (CA), IEEE Computer Society, pp. 233–240. Franco Cicirelli achieved a PhD in computer science from the University of Calabria (Unical), DEIS—department of electronics informatics and systems science. As a postdoc, he is making research on agent and service paradigms for the development of distributed systems, parallel simulation, Petri nets, distributed measurement systems. He holds a membership with ACM. Angelo Furfaro, PhD, is a computer science assistant professor at Unical, DEIS, teaching object-oriented programming. His research interests are centred on: multi-agent systems, modeling and analysis of time-dependent systems, Petri nets, parallel simulation, verification of real-time systems, distributed measurement systems. He is a member of ACM. Libero Nigro is a full professor of computer science at Unical, DEIS, where he teaches object-oriented programming, software engineering and real-time systems courses. He directs the Software Engineering Laboratory (www.lis.deis.unical.it). His current research interests include: software engineering of time-dependent and distributed systems, real-time systems, Petri nets, modeling and parallel simulation of complex systems, distributed measurement systems. Prof. Nigro is a member of ACM and IEEE.     

Petri net-based process monitoring: a workflow management system for process modelling and monitoring

Nowadays business process management is becoming a fundamental piece of many industrial processes. To manage the evolution and interactions between the business actions it is important to accurately model the steps to follow and the resources needed by a process. Workflows provide a way of describing the order of execution and the dependencies between the constituting activities of business processes. Workflow monitoring can help to improve and avoid delays in industrial environments where concurrent processes are carried out. In this article a new Petri net extension for modelling workflow activities together with their required resources is presented: resource-aware Petri nets (RAPN). An intelligent workflow management system for process monitoring and delay prediction is also introduced. Resource aware-Petri nets include time and resources within the classical Petri net workflow representation, facilitating the task of modelling and monitoring workflows. The workflow management system monitors the execution of workflows and detects possible delays using RAPN. In order to test this new approach, different services from a medical maintenance environment have been modelled and simulated.     

一个组织间松散耦合跨组织工作流的仿真模型

为了解决松散耦合跨组织工作流的仿真建模问题,以染色Petri网为理论基础,将颜色集、染色函数、资源库所、等待库所、忙库所、开始变迁、结束变迁、角色、组织、时间函数、资源函数和变迁函数引入到IOWF(inter-organizational workflow),提出了染色多维跨组织工作流网CMD/IOWF(colored multi-dimension/IOWF).基于CMD/IOWF,讨论了组织间松散耦合跨组织工作流中多个不同项目工作流实例通过资源共享和活动同步相互耦合以及与仿真相关的资源约束和时间的建模问题.通过定义输入/输出、状态、事件、时间推进函数和状态转移函数,给出了一个组织间松散耦合的多个跨组织工作流的仿真模型.基于该模型的仿真分析可以求解组织间松散耦合跨组织工作流的关键性能指标,包括:对应项目工作流实例的平均执行时间、平均执行成本及其关于组织的分布,各项目的资源利用率.最后,以一个实例验证了提出模型的有效性.     

Dynamic checking of temporal constraints for concurrent workflows

At present, workflow management systems have not sufficiently dealt with the issues of time, involving time modelling at build-time and time management at run-time. They are lack of the ability to support the checking of temporal constraints at run-time. Although some approaches have been devised to tackle this problem, they are limited to a single workflow and use only static techniques to verify temporal constraints. In reality, there are multiple workflows executing concurrently in a workflow management system. There may well exist resource constraints between these concurrent workflows, which affect significantly the verification of temporal constraints at run-time. This paper proposes a novel approach for dynamic verification of temporal constraints for concurrent workflows. We first investigate resource constraints in workflow management systems, and then define concurrent workflow executions. Based on these definitions, we propose a verification method by analysing the temporal relationship and resource constraints between activities among concurrent workflows.     

延迟时间Petri网的验证分析

延迟时间Petri网（Delay Time Petri Nets，DTPN）是一类重要的时间扩展Petri网系统，解决了其他时间扩展Petri网（如时间Petri网）在保存时间约束时所面临的困难。可调度验证的目的是验证工作流模型时间约束的合理性，对流程实例的时间可达性进行仿真。提出一种基于DTPN的时间约束工作流验证分析方法。给出了DTPN的相关定义，并结合工作流控制结构描述了变迁可触发的时间条件；提出了DTPN触发点的概念以及基于此的验证分析算法；简要分析了DTPN的特性。DTPN的研究丰富完善了现有时间Petri网体系，具有积极的意义。     

Model checking multi-level and recursive nets

With the increasing complexity of the problems and systems arising nowadays, the use of multi-level models is becoming more frequent in practice. However, there are still few reports in the literature concerning methods for analyzing such models without flattening the multi-level structure. For instance, several variants of multi-level Petri nets have been applied for modeling interaction protocols and mobility in multi-agent systems and coordination of cross-organizational workflows. But there are few automated tools for analyzing the behavior of these nets. In this paper we explain how to detect faults in models based on a representative class of multi-level nets: the nested Petri nets. We translate a nested net into a verifiable model that preserves its modular structure, a PROMELA program. This allows the use of SPIN model checker to verify properties related to termination, boundedness and reachability.