Workflow charts and their semantics using abstract state machines

Abstract

Workflow charts are a novel way to describe business processes and a way of putting more emphasis on the human-computer interaction. They introduce a typed approach to workflow specification in order to improve flexibility in business process technology by proposing a concept for integrating workflow definition and dialogue programming, being also open to business process modelling. Although their precursor has its semantic specification based on Unified Modelling Language semantics, workflow charts currently lack a complete formal semantic specification. Instead of enhancing the Unified Modelling Language semantics, the approach of specifying the semantics of workflow charts using the formalism of Abstract State Machines has been chosen. The resulting description provides a precise operational semantics.