Blockchain technology offers a sizable promise to rethink the way interorganizational business processes are managed because of its potential to realize execution without a central party serving as a single point of trust (and failure). To stimulate research on this promise and the limits thereof, in this article, we outline the challenges and opportunities of blockchain for business process management (BPM). We first reflect how blockchains could be used in the context of the established BPM lifecycle and second how they might become relevant beyond. We conclude our discourse with a summary of seven research directions for investigating the application of blockchain technology in the context of BPM.
Abstract. We investigate the problem of ranking all process models in a repository according to their similarity with respect to a given process model. We focus specifically on the application of graph matching algorithms to this similarity search problem. Since the corresponding graph matching problem is NP-complete, we seek to find a compromise between computational complexity and quality of the computed ranking. Using a repository of 100 process models, we evaluate four graph matching algorithms, ranging from a greedy one to a relatively exhaustive one. The results show that the mean average precision obtained by a fast greedy algorithm is close to that obtained with the most exhaustive algorithm.
Summary Blockchain platforms, such as Ethereum, allow a set of actors to maintain a ledger of transactions without relying on a central authority and to deploy programs, called smart contracts, that are executed whenever certain transactions occur. These features can be used as basic building blocks for executing collaborative business processes between mutually untrusting parties. However, implementing business processes using the low‐level primitives provided by blockchain platforms is cumbersome and error‐prone. In contrast, established business process management systems (BPMSs), such as those based on the standard Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), provide convenient abstractions for rapid development of process‐oriented applications. This article demonstrates how to combine the advantages of a BPMS with those of a blockchain platform. The article introduces a blockchain‐based BPMN execution engine, named Caterpillar. Like any BPMN execution engine, Caterpillar supports the creation of instances of a process model and allows users to monitor the state of process instances and to execute tasks thereof. The specificity of Caterpillar is that the state of each process instance is maintained on the (Ethereum) blockchain and the workflow routing is performed by smart contracts generated by a BPMN‐to‐Solidity compiler. The Caterpillar compiler supports a large array of BPMN constructs, including subprocesses, multiple‐instance activities, and event handlers. The paper describes the architecture of Caterpillar and the interfaces it provides to support the monitoring of process instances, the allocation and execution of work items, and the execution of service tasks.
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