On Structured Workflow Modelling

Abstract

Abstract. 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.

Understanding Business Process Models: The Costs and Benefits of Structuredness

“…Fig.1(b) shows a semantically equivalent yet structured model. Previous research on structured process modeling has demonstrated that not all unstructured process models can be transformed into equivalent structured models [11]. Such models are hereby called inherently unstructured.…”

“…There are two root causes for process models being inherently unstructured. The first one arises from the structure shown in Fig.2; it has been shown to be inherently unstructured in [11]. The second cause is a cycle that has more than one exit point, in which case it can only be structured by introducing boolean variables to capture part of the control-flow [23] -arguably an undesirable solution in the context of process modeling.…”

“…It has its roots in compiler theory [23] and code refactoring [35]. Kiepuszewski et al [11] made a first attempt at classifying unstructured process models that can be transformed to structured equivalents. They showed that unstructured process models cannot always be replaced with structured models that are behavior-equivalent.…”

Enabling Personalized Process Schedules with Time-Aware Process Views

“…This paper, presumes that process schemas are well-structured [16], i.e., sequences, branchings (of different semantics), and loops are specified as blocks with well-defined start and end nodes having the same gateway type. These blocks, also known as SESE (single-entry-single-exit) blocks (cf.…”

Managing Structural and Textual Quality of Business Process Models

“…The challenge in this context is to define a transformation from an unstructured model towards a structured model. It is well known that a structured model can always be constructed for process models without concurrency, but that some concurrent behaviour is inherently unstructured [52]. The research reported in [50] presents a approach based on the identification of ordering relations which leads to a maximally structured model under fully concurrent bisimulation.…”