Formalizing (and Reasoning About) the Specifications of Workflows

We address the problem of workkow requirements speciica-tions under realistic assumptions that it involves experts from diierent domains (diierent 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 speciications' correctness. To address this, we propose a high level language AW as a basis of our prototype tool for process speciication. We go \one step" before actual analysis and design, and ooer a formalism which enables the experts to specify their knowledge in terms of the eeects that the activities have on the workkow environment. Our methodology allows expressing not only the knowledge, but also the \ignorance" (the semantics allows unknown values to reeect a realistic situation of agents dealing with incomplete information) and the possibility of exceptional situations. We deene an entailment relation which enables reasoning about the correctness of the speciications, in terms of achieving a desired goal, and testing about consequences of modiications in the workkow descriptions.