Workflow specification and inference in some extension of allen’s interval logic.

A workflow is an automation of a process, in which agents (people or programs) are involved in activities for solving a set of tasks in order to attain a common goal. The concept of workflow appeared in business informatics. Currently, the workflow techniques are used in many other fields of informatics (medical and bioinformatics, organization of scientific researches, computer-aided design and manufacturing, robotics et al,) Many methods and formalisms were applied for specifying workflows. Specific logical languages were used for this. In particular, temporal logics are popular as workflow specification formalisms. Allen’s interval logic is the simplest temporal logic, but only a few kinds of qualitative properties can be specified for workflows, We define a metric extension of Allen’s interval logic and show how to use it for specifying workflows. We construct an inference method for this formalism. The method is based on the analytic tableaux techniques. We also show how to use the inference method for query answering over workflows schemas and their states