While there are many similarities between the languages of the various workflow management systems, there are also significant
differences. One particular area of differences is caused by the fact that different systems impose different syntactic restrictions.
In such cases, business analysts have to choose between either conforming to the language in their specifications or transforming
these specifications afterwards. The latter option is preferable as this allows for a separation of concerns. In this paper
we investigate to what extent such transformations are possible in the context of various syntactical restrictions (the most
restrictive of which will be referred to as structured workflows). We also provide a deep insight into the consequences, particularly in terms of expressive power, of imposing such restrictions.
This research is supported by an ARC SPIRT grant “Component System Architecture for an Open Distributed Enterprise Management
System with Configurable Workflow Support” between QUT and Mincom.