Assessing SMT and CLP approaches for workflow nets verification

In the actual business world, companies rely more and more on workflows to model the core of their business processes. In this context, the focus of workflow analysts is made on the verification of workflows specifications, in particular of modal specifications that allow the description of necessary or admissible behaviors. The design and the analysis of business processes commonly relies on workflow nets, a suited class of Petri nets. The goal of this paper is to evaluate and compare in a deep way two resolution methods-satisfiability modulo theory and constraint logic programming-applied to the verification of modal specifications over workflow nets. Firstly, it provides a concise description of the verification methods based on constraint solving. Secondly, it introduces the toolchain developed to automate the full verification process. Thirdly, it describes the experimental protocol designed to evaluate and compare the scalability and efficiency of both resolution approaches and reports on the obtained results. Finally, these obtained results are discussed in detail, lessons learned from these experiments are given, and, on the basis of experiments feedback, directions for improvement and future work are suggested.