Synthesizing a Library of Process Templates through Partial-Order Planning Algorithms

The design time specification of dynamic processes can be time-consuming and error-prone, due to the high number of tasks involved and their context-dependent nature. Such processes frequently suffer from potential interference among their constituents, since resources are usually shared by the process participants and it is difficult to foresee all the potential tasks interactions in advance. Concurrent tasks may not be independent from each other (e.g., they could operate on the same data at the same time), resulting in incorrect outcomes. To address these issues, we propose an approach that exploits partial-order planning algorithms for automatically synthesizing a library of process template definitions for different contextual cases. The resulting templates guarantee sound concurrency in the execution of their activities and are reusable in a variety of partially-known contextual environments.