Formalizing a Decision Table into Petri Nets

Abstract

Business workflow designers use decision tables to lay out all possible business rules in the so-called IF-THEN format. However, as the business process continue to develop iteratively, the business rules are likely to explode considerably. This usually leads to an inadvertently error-prone design of the business process. Therefore, some designers employ a visualization technique to help them comprehend the decision tables more profoundly and mitigate the design errors. This paper proposes a scheme to visualize the decision tables using Petri nets. A Petri net is a formal method that is used to illustrate business flows and decision paths of the decision table. Our method starts with defining a set of rules which transforms a decision table into a Petri net model. Next, the table is transformed into a Petri net model. This transforming process often disclose inconsistent rules and redundant rules. After refining the table and obtaining a final model, a simulation tool is then used to animate the Petri net model. This allows the designers to verify the internal working of the decision table, identify its flaws, and fix the errors more precisely.