Characterizing workflow nets using regions

N. BUSI;PINNA, GIOVANNI MICHELE

2006-01-01

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Abstract

The target of workflow mining is to obtain a workflow management systems from a possibly complete set of event logs of the system. This gives a fruitful support for developing complex business transaction sequences and business collaboration applications, possibly filling the gap from the theoretical design and the real instances. An algorithm (the alpha-algorithm) has been proposed in literature to rediscover a Workflow (Petri) Net that generated a given event log. This algorithm have some drawback as it fails in rediscovering the correct net. We investigate on how the theory of regions, used to synthesize nets from marking graphs, can be used to mine Workflow Nets, discussing the behaviour of region based net synthesis on some cases that turn out to be problematic for the alpha-algorithm. We also briefly discuss on how transitions systems can be obtained by event logs.