Petri net-based semantics for verification and validation of workflow patterns

Modelling and performance analysis is one of the most important issues in business processes. Built on top of web protocols and XML language, web services are emerging as a high level framework for business‐to‐business relationships. UML can be used to model web services interactions and reengineered diagrams using Petri nets like semantics instead of state machines. Unfortunately, the standard has failed to define formal semantics. To address this issue, this paper provides a mapping from activities to Petri net models. Formalisations basing on UML and Petri nets of control‐flow patterns for service composition are addressed. We propose a high‐level class of Petri nets for describing the behaviour of scenarios of web services composition. Developed models support the strong dynamic and temporal aspects of these scenarios. Translation rules from flow patterns into Petri net models are provided. Finally an illustrative example is given to show the applicability of the proposed approach.