Combining Analysis of Unstructured Workflows with Transformation to Structured Workflows

Hauser, Rainer; Friess, M.; Küster, Jochen M.; Vanhatalo, Jussi

doi:10.1109/edoc.2006.21

Cited by 21 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…8 with their member rules, but without the error rules discussed in [15]. The simplest family of rules covers cycles, as depicted in Fig.…”

Section: A Families Of Rulesmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The effect of the application strategy as well as its properties and pitfalls such as pseudocycles have been discussed in [15]. Here, we concentrate on the set of workflows that can be resolved by the region-growing rules if these rules are used as reduction rules.…”

Section: E Region Reducibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, a workflow is region-reducible if and only if it is semantically sound. This paper, based on the conference paper [15] extended with the main theorems proving the equivalence of semantical soundness and region reducibility, is organized as follows. Section II introduces the basic workflow concepts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

An Incremental Approach to the Analysis and Transformation of Workflows Using Region Trees

Hauser

Friess

Küster

et al. 2008

IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, Cybern. C

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The analysis of workflows in terms of structural correctness is important for ensuring the quality of workflow models. Typically, this analysis is only one step in a larger development process, followed by further transformation steps that lead from highlevel models to more refined models until the workflow can finally be deployed on the underlying workflow engine of the production system. For practical and scalable applications, both analysis and transformation of workflows must be integrated to allow incremental changes of larger workflows. In this paper, we introduce the concept of a region tree (RT) for workflow models that can be used as the central data structure for both workflow analysis and workflow transformation. An RT is similar to a program structure tree and imposes a hierarchy of regions as an overlay structure onto the workflow model. It allows an incremental approach to the analysis and transformation of workflows, and thereby, significantly reduces the overhead because individual regions can be dealt with separately. The RT is built using a set of region-growing rules. The set of rules presented here is shown to be correct and complete in the sense that a workflow is region-reducible as defined through these rules if and only if it is semantically sound.

show abstract

“…8 with their member rules, but without the error rules discussed in [15]. The simplest family of rules covers cycles, as depicted in Fig.…”

Section: A Families Of Rulesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: E Region Reducibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

An Incremental Approach to the Analysis and Transformation of Workflows Using Region Trees

Hauser

Friess

Küster

et al. 2008

IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, Cybern. C

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In this paper, we shall be interested only in structured BPM processes only, much like structured workflows [3,1]. A BPM process is structured if and only if it can be built inductively built as follows.…”

Section: An Overview Of Bpm Notationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Process conformance using CSP

Bihary

Koneti

Roy

2012

Proceedings of the 5th India Software Engineering Conference

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

One of the frequently occurring problems in process aware information systems is to determine if the observations (in the form of events logs) match/fit the behavior of the reference system (modeled as a business process). This problem is more commonly known as "process conformance checking". In this paper we tackle this problem using concepts from Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP), which facilitates automated analysis using FDR model checker.

show abstract

“…We used such a structured OR-block in Section 2.4.2 to illustrate how refinement can affect the behavior in some EPC formalizations. Finding a structured model with behavior equivalent to an originally unstructured model is also used as a verification technique (see [215,15,16,253,469,169]). Some process modeling languages, like BPEL and several workflow systems [214], enforce the definition of a structured model by imposing syntactical restrictions 2 in order to provide correctness by design (see [248,91,26,24].…”

Section: Correctness Criteria For Business Process Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metrics for Process Models

Mendling

2008

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

136

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PrefaceBusiness process modeling plays an important role in the management of business processes. As valuable design artifacts, business process models are subject to quality considerations. The absence of formal errors such as deadlocks is of paramount importance for the subsequent implementation of the process. This book develops a framework for the detection of formal errors in business process models and for the prediction of error probability based on quality attributes of these models (metrics). We focus on Event-driven Process Chains (EPCs), a widely used business process modeling language due to its extensive tool support. The advantage of this focus is firstly that the results of this book can be directly translated into process modeling practice. Secondly, there is a large empirical basis of models. By utilizing this large stock of EPC model collections, we aim to bring forth general insights into the connection between process model metrics and error probability. In order to validate such a connection, we first need to establish an understanding of which model attributes are likely connected with error probability. Furthermore, we must formally define an appropriate notion of correctness that answers the question of whether or not a model has a formal error. As a prerequisite to answering this question, we must define the operational semantics of the process modeling language formally. ContributionsThis book presents a precise description of EPCs, their control-flow semantics and a suitable correctness criterion called EPC soundness. Furthermore, we identify theoretical arguments on why structural metrics should be connected with error probability and provide an empirical validation of this connection. To be more concise, this book provides the following technical contributions.Formalization of the OR-join: The semantics of the OR-join have been debated for more than a decade. Existing formalizations suffer from either a restriction of the EPC syntax (see [78,247,238,4,101]) or from non-intuitive behavior (see [325,218,11,465]). In Chap. 2, we formalize the EPC semantics concept as proposed elsewhere [267]. In comparison to other approaches this novel formalization has the advantage of not being restricted to a subset of EPCs. Moreover, VIII Preface it provides intuitive semantics for blocks of matching OR-splits and joins since they cannot deadlock. As a proof of concept, we implemented a plug-in for ProM that calculates the reachability graph. In this way, this novel semantics definition contributes to research on the specification of business process modeling languages. Verification of process models with OR-joins and multiple start and end events:Verification techniques for process models with OR-joins and multiple start and end events suffer from one of two problems: Firstly, they build on an approximation of the actual behavior, e.g., by considering a relaxed notion of soundness [101], by involving user decisions [109] or by approximating relaxed soundness with invariants [440]. Therefore, they d...

show abstract

Combining Analysis of Unstructured Workflows with Transformation to Structured Workflows

Cited by 21 publications

References 7 publications

An Incremental Approach to the Analysis and Transformation of Workflows Using Region Trees

An Incremental Approach to the Analysis and Transformation of Workflows Using Region Trees

Process conformance using CSP

Metrics for Process Models

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About