Specifying workflow web services using petri nets with objects and generating of their OWL-S specifications

Abstract

This paper deals with Workflow Web Services (W2S). By W2S, we mean services automating business processes, and whose description and execution are accessible through the Web. In a first step, we use the Petri Net with Objects (PNO) formalism to graphically and formally model W2S, and then, in a second step, we provide rules to derive OWL-S specifications from PNO specifications automatically. The two main advantages of our approach are, first, to ease the design, the simulation and the verification of a workflow service thanks to PNO, and second, to publish it thanks to OWL-S, which is a semantic Web service description language. Consequently, PNO can be seen as a formalism providing an operational semantic to OWL-S since it defines formal and executable specifications to analyze, simulate, check and validate OWL-S specifications. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.