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When Are Two Workflows the Same?

Hidders, Jan and Dumas, Marlon and van der Aalst, Wil M.P. and ter Hofstede, Arthur H.M. and Verelst, Jan (2005) When Are Two Workflows the Same? In: Eleventh Computing: The Australasian Theory Symposium (CATS2005), February 2005, Newcastle, Australia.

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Abstract

In the area of workflow management, one is confronted with a large number of competing languages and the relations between them (e.g. relative expressiveness) are usually not clear. Moreover, even within the same language it is generally possible to express the same workflow in different ways, a feature known as variability. This paper aims at providing some of the formal groundwork for studying relative expressiveness and variability by defining notions of equivalence capturing different views on how workflow systems operate. Firstly, a notion of observational equivalence in the absence of silent steps is defined and related to classical bisimulation. Secondly, a number of equivalence notions in the presence of silent steps are defined. A distinction is made between the case where silent steps are visible (but not controllable) by the environment and the case where silent steps are not visible, i.e., there is an alternation between system events and environment interactions. It is shown that these notions of equivalence are different and do not coincide with classical notions of bisimulation with silent steps (e.g. weak and branching).

ID Code:729
Item Type:Conference Paper
Additional URLs :
Keywords :workflow, bisimulation, comparative concurrency semantics
ISBN:1920682236
Divisions:QUT Faculties and Divisions > Faculty of Science and Technology
Copyright Owner :Copyright 2005 Australian Computer Society
Copyright Statement :Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.
Deposited On:19 Jul 2006
Last Modified:30 Jan 2009 01:43

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