Deterministic Petri Net Languages as Business Process Specification Language

Today, a wide variety of techniques have been proposed to model the process aspects of business processes. The problem, however, is that many of these are focused on providing a clear graphical representation of the models and give almost no support for complex verification procedures. Alternatively, the use of Petri Nets as a business process modeling language has been repeatedly proposed. In complex business processes the use of Petri Nets has been criticized and the technique is believed to be unable to capture such processes in all aspects. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce the application of Petri Net language theory for business process specification. Petri Net languages are an extension to the Petri Net theory, and they provide a set of techniques to describe complex business processes more efficiently. More specifically, we advocate the application of deterministic Petri Net languages to model the control flow aspects of business processes. The balance between modeling power and analysis possibilities makes deterministic Petri Nets a highly efficient technique, used in a wide range of domains. The proof of their usability, as business process specification language, is given by providing suitable solutions to model the basic and more complex business process patterns [4]. Additionally, some points of particular interest are concisely discussed