A Formal Diagrammatic Approach to Timed Workflow Modelling

Abstract

A workflow model is an abstract representation of a real life workflow and consists of interconnected tasks depicting the desired executions of real life activities. Time information is an important aspect of many safety-critical workflows. This paper presents a new formal diagrammatic approach to timed workflow modelling involving principles from model-driven engineering. The approach extends the Diagram Predicate Framework, which is based on category theory and graph transformations, for the specification of workflow modelling formalisms. We develop a transition system to represent the dynamic semantics involving time in which transitions are described by specification transformations between instances. To model time, we use predicates for time delay and duration with transition rules for time advancement.