Mapping Petri Nets and Metagraphs: A Step Towards Inter-Organizational Workflows

In a world of increasing inter-connectedness between firms, workflow management systems that can interoperate with each are becoming of increasing importance. In light of the number of different modeling techniques used to model workflows, mapping between different workflow modeling techniques is an important problem. This paper proposes a mapping between Petri Nets and Metagraphs based on the underlying characteristics of the two models. Providing such a map would enable workflow management systems based on different metamodels to understand and communicate with each other to a greater degree than the current state of the art permits. In addition, providing a mapping between these two related modeling techniques would allow designers the ability to use the strengths of each the techniques. Finally, it would be a step in the direction of a Unified Modeling Language which could be used to model both metamodels.