Customized atomicity specification for transactional workflows

We introduce a new approach for specifying transaction management requirements for workflow applications. We propose independent models for the specification of workflow and transaction properties. Although we distinguish multiple transaction properties in our approach, we focus on atomicity. We propose an intuitive notation to specify atomicity and provide generic rules to integrate the workflow specification and the atomicity specification into one single model based on Petri nets. The integrated model can be checked for correctness. We call this correctness criterion relaxed soundness as a weaker notion of the existing soundness criterion. We can relax the correctness criterion because we rely on run-time transaction management. A real life example shows the applicability of the concepts.

[1]  Andreas Reuter,et al.  Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques , 1992 .

[2]  Gottfried Vossen,et al.  Transactional Workflows , 1997, DOOD.

[3]  Dragos Manolescu,et al.  Production workflow: concepts and techniques , 2001, SOEN.

[4]  Charles T. Davies,et al.  Data Processing Spheres of Control , 1978, IBM Syst. J..

[5]  Gustavo Alonso,et al.  Processes + Transactions = Distributed Applications , 1997 .

[6]  Maria E. Orlowska,et al.  FlowBack: Providing Backward Recovery for Workflow Systems , 1998, SIGMOD Conference.

[7]  Panayiotis Kypros Chrysanthis Acta, a framework for modeling and reasoning , 1992 .

[8]  Maria E. Orlowska,et al.  FlowBack: providing backward recovery for workflow management systems , 1998, SIGMOD '98.

[9]  Wil M.P. van der Aalst,et al.  Three good reasons for using a Petri-net-based workflow management system , 1996 .

[10]  Amit P. Sheth,et al.  Specifying and Enforcing Intertask Dependencies , 1993, VLDB.

[11]  Shamkant B. Navathe,et al.  Information and Process Integration in Enterprises: Rethinking Documents , 1998 .

[12]  Mark F. Hornick,et al.  Customizing Transaction Models and Mechanisms in a Programmable Environment Supporting Reliable Workflow Automation , 1996, IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng..

[13]  Paul W. P. J. Grefen,et al.  Cross-Organizational Transaction Support for Virtual Enterprises , 2000, CoopIS.

[14]  Andreas Reuter,et al.  ConTracts Revisited , 1997, Advanced Transaction Models and Architectures.

[15]  Gustavo Alonso,et al.  Advanced transaction models in workflow contexts , 1996, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Data Engineering.

[16]  Frank Leymann,et al.  Supporting Business Transactions Via Partial Backward Recovery In Workflow Management Systems , 1995, BTW.

[17]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Woflan 2.0: A Petri-Net-Based Workflow Diagnosis Tool , 2000, ICATPN.

[18]  Mark F. Hornick,et al.  A Framework for Enforceable Specification of Extended Transaction Models and Transaction Workflows , 1994, Int. J. Cooperative Inf. Syst..

[19]  James L. Peterson,et al.  Petri Nets , 1977, CSUR.

[20]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Workflow Verification: Finding Control-Flow Errors Using Petri-Net-Based Techniques , 2000, Business Process Management.

[21]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  The Application of Petri Nets to Workflow Management , 1998, J. Circuits Syst. Comput..

[22]  A. El Abbadi,et al.  Exotica: a project on advanced transaction management and workflow systems , 1995, SIGO.

[23]  Gustavo Alonso,et al.  Flexible exception handling in the OPERA process support system , 1998, Proceedings. 18th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (Cat. No.98CB36183).

[24]  Panos K. Chrysanthis,et al.  Synthesis of extended transaction models using ACTA , 1994, TODS.

[25]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Verification of Workflow Nets , 1997, ICATPN.

[26]  Tadao Murata,et al.  Petri nets: Properties, analysis and applications , 1989, Proc. IEEE.

[27]  Jian Tang,et al.  Enforcement of Inter-Task Dependencies in Workflows, Characterization and Paradigm , 1998, Int. J. Cooperative Inf. Syst..

[28]  Matthias Nussbaum Database Transaction Models for Advanced Applications , 1992 .