A Logic-Based Formalism to Model and Analyze Workflow Executions

Abstract. We describe a new approach to workflow analysis, which combines a rich graph representation of workflow schemes with simple (i.e., stratified), yet powerful DATALOG rules to express complex properties and constraints on executions. Both the graph representation and the DATALOG rules are mapped into a unique program in DATALOG ev! , that is a recent extension of DATALOG for handling events. This mapping enables the designer to simulate the actual behavior of the modelled scheme by fixing an initial state and an execution scenario (i.e., a sequence of executions for the same workflow) and querying the state after such executions.