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to each activity. In (Amirreza and Eder, 2008), the
authors adapted their approach for checking tempo-
ral consistency of inter-organizational workflows us-
ing workflow views. They present a timed work-
flow graph approach in order to express the upper and
lower bound constraints of task execution. The tech-
nique enable partners to execute the IOW without vio-
lating temporal constraints such as explicitly assigned
deadlines.
Temporal constraints modeling have also been
studied in web service compositions research field.
In (Diaz et al., 2007), temporal expectations are ex-
pressed using goal-oriented engineering. An exten-
sion of KAOS, an approach for goal oriented for-
mulation, is proposed and allow formal specifica-
tion of timing requirements and automatic genera-
tion of counterexamples using model checking tech-
niques. In (Kazhamiakin et al., 2006), authors pro-
pose an extension of timed automata formalism to
specify global timing aspects of web service composi-
tions, called Web Service Timed State Transition Sys-
tems (WSTTS). Complex timed requirements can be
specified for modeling time intervals between events,
bounds or combinations of them. An algorithm is pro-
posed to compute the interval limits allowing to meet
the timing constraint. In (Benatallah et al., 2005),
business protocols are modeled as deterministic finite
state machines, and temporal abstractions of business
protocols are specified using timed transitions.
Our work is based on the CoopFlow approach and
guarantee that each partner can keep the critical part
of its business process private. Activities duration are
not fixed. We plan to specify a communication proto-
col allowing partners to negotiate the specified dead-
lines according to their needs and their available re-
sources.
6 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we presented a time-oriented frame-
work for incorporating and verification deadlines con-
straints in the context of Inter-Organizational Work-
flows (IOWs). Even if the business behavior comple-
mentarity of the involved parties is validated, miss-
ing deadlines while delivering required services may
lead to a global failed execution. Based on the ex-
isting CoopFlow approach and using the Time Petri
Net theory, we proposed a method for expressing and
publishing sensible time deadlines, by each partner.
State reachability analysis is used for checking tem-
poral correctness of the resulting IOW. A further work
will concentrate on formulating a systematic method
for assuring the satisfaction and consistency of all
the published time constraints, within the context of
the global business process, while maintaining the
core advantage of CoopFlow; i.e. that each partner
can keep the critical parts of its business process pri-
vate. We have to prove that deadline local verifi-
cation processes executed by partners can lead to a
deadline conformance in the resulting interconnected
workflow. Furthermore, we advocate that deadlines
should be negotiated. We will concentrate on specify-
ing a communication protocol between eventual can-
didates, which can lead to constraint negotiation in
order to achieve the cooperation.
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