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doi:10.1016/j.tcs.2005.10.035 
Copyright © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Automatic workflow verification and generation
Received 12 August 2003;
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Abstract
Correctness is an important aspect of workflow management systems. However, most of the workflow literature focuses only on the modeling aspects and assumes that a workflow is correct if during the execution it respects the control and data dependency specified by the workflow designer. To address the correctness question properly we propose a new workflow model based on Hoare semantics that allows to: (1) automatically check if the desired outcome of a workflow can be produced by its actual implementation, (2) automatically synthesize a workflow implementation from the workflow specification and a given task library.
In particular we: (1) formalize the semantics of workflows and tasks with pre- and postconditions, (2) for each control construct we provide a set of sound inference rules formalizing its semantics. While most of our workflow constructs are standard, two of them are new: the universal and the existential constructs. We then describe algorithms for automatically checking the correctness of workflows and for automatic workflow generation.
Keywords: Workflow verification; Workflow generation; Workflow correctness; Web services; Hoare logic
