Formalizing (and Reasoning about) the Specifications of Workflows

We address the problem of workflow requirements specifications considering realistic assumptions that it involves experts from different domains (representatives of different business policies) where not all the possible execution scenarios are known beforehand. Using recent results on reasoning about actions, we formalize the notion of the specifications' correctness. To address this, we propose a high level language A sub W as a basis of your prototype tool for process specification. We go "one step" before actual analysis and design, and offer a formalism which enables the experts to specify their knowledge in terms of the effects that the activities have on the workflow environment. Our methodology allows expressing not only the knowledge, but also the "ignorance" (the semantics allows for unknown values to reflect a realistic situation of agents dealing with incomplete information), and the possibility of exceptional situations. We define an entailment relation which enables reasoning about the correctness of the specification, in terms of achieving a desired goal and, also testing about consequences of modifications in the workflow descriptions.