Formalization of BPMN Gateways using the DD-LOTOS Formal Language

Abstract

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), is a standardized graphical language used for the graphical modeling of business processes. A BPMN model is composed of several small graphs called elements; these elements make it possible to describe the activities, the events, and the interactions between the components of a business process. Among the essential elements of BPMN are gateways, which control the flow of data. However, the big challenge of these gateways is the existence of several interpretations of the same BPMN model containing gateways; this is due to the informal and ambiguous definition. Several works have proposed the formalization of gateways using formal languages such as process algebras, Petri nets, etc. The purpose of this article is to propose a formalization of BPMN gateways using the formal language DD-LOTOS. DD-LOTOS is defined on a semantics of true parallelism called maximality semantics and allows to support distribution and temporal constraints. We then propose the verification of certain properties using the UPPAAL model checker. Our approach has been validated through a case study representing the online purchasing process.