In: Petri Net Technology for Communication-Based Systems, pages 281-294. Volume 2472 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science / Hartmut Ehrig, Wolfgang Reisig, Grzegorz Rozenberg and Herbert Weber (Eds.) --- Springer-Verlag, November 2003.
Abstract: The integration of workflows of different enterprises requires to resolve conceptual inconsistencies which are best dealt with using a high-level modelling language. Languages like the UML provide dedicated notations for workflow modelling (e.g., by means of activity diagrams), but due to the lack of formal semantics, only little support for detecting and resolving inconsistencies can be provided. We propose open Petri nets as a suitable semantic model for workflows spanning different enterprises, and discuss the use of this model to formalise a notion of consistent evolution.