A Reflective PN-Based Approach to Dynamic Workflow Change

The design of dynamic workflows needs adequate modeling/specification formalisms and tools to soundly handle possible changes occurring during workflow operation. A common approach is to pollute design with details that do not regard the current workflow behavior, but rather its evolution. That hampers analysis, reuse and maintenance in general. We propose and discuss the adoption of a recent Petri Net based reflective model (based on classical PN) as a support to dynamic workflow design, by addressing a localized problem: how to determine what tasks should be redone and which ones do not when transferring a workflow instance from an old to a new template. Behind there is the idea that keeping functional aspects separated from evolutionary ones, and applying evolution to the (current) workflow template only when necessary, results in a simple reference model on which the ability of formally verifying typical workflow properties is preserved, thus favoring a dependable adaptability.