Abstract
The increasing adoption of modelling methods contributes to a better understanding of the flow of processes, from the internal behaviour of a single organisation to a wider perspective where several organisations exchange messages. In this regard, BPMN collaboration is a suitable modelling abstraction. Even if this is a widely accepted notation, only a limited effort has been expended in formalising its semantics, especially for what it concerns the interplay among control features, data handling and exchange of messages in scenarios requiring multiple instances of interacting participants. In this paper, we face the problem of providing a formal semantics for BPMN collaborations including multiple instances, while taking into account the data perspective. Beyond defining a novel formalisation, we also provide a BPMN collaboration animator tool faithfully implementing the formal semantics. Its visualisation facilities support designers in debugging multi-instance collaboration models.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
OMG: Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN V 2.0) (2011)
Suchenia, A., Potempa, T., Ligȩza, A., Jobczyk, K., Kluza, K.: Selected approaches towards taxonomy of business process anomalies. In: Pełech-Pilichowski, T., Mach-Król, M., Olszak, C.M. (eds.) Advances in Business ICT: New Ideas from Ongoing Research. SCI, vol. 658, pp. 65–85. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47208-9_5
Dijkman, R.M., Dumas, M., Ouyang, C.: Semantics and analysis of business process models in BPMN. Inf. Softw. Technol. 50(12), 1281–1294 (2008)
Decker, G., Dijkman, R., Dumas, M., García-Bañuelos, L.: Transforming BPMN diagrams into YAWL nets. In: Dumas, M., Reichert, M., Shan, M.-C. (eds.) BPM 2008. LNCS, vol. 5240, pp. 386–389. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85758-7_30
Wong, P.Y.H., Gibbons, J.: A process semantics for BPMN. In: Liu, S., Maibaum, T., Araki, K. (eds.) ICFEM 2008. LNCS, vol. 5256, pp. 355–374. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88194-0_22
Börger, E., Thalheim, B.: A method for verifiable and validatable business process modeling. In: Börger, E., Cisternino, A. (eds.) Advances in Software Engineering. LNCS, vol. 5316, pp. 59–115. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-89762-0_3
Van Gorp, P., Dijkman, R.: A visual token-based formalization of BPMN 2.0 based on in-place transformations. Inf. Softw. Technol. 55(2), 365–394 (2013)
Hermann, A., et al.: Collaborative business process management - a literature-based analysis of methods for supporting model understandability. In: WI, pp. 286–300 (2017)
Becker, J., Kugeler, M., Rosemann, M.: Process Management: A Guide for the Design of Business Processes. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24798-2
Emens, R., Vanderfeesten, I., Reijers, H.A.: The dynamic visualization of business process models: a prototype and evaluation. In: Reichert, M., Reijers, H.A. (eds.) BPM 2015. LNBIP, vol. 256, pp. 559–570. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42887-1_45
Momotko, M., Nowicki, B.: Visualisation of (distributed) process execution based on extended BPMN. In: DEXA, pp. 280–284. IEEE (2003)
Allweyer, T., Schweitzer, S.: A tool for animating BPMN token flow. In: Mendling, J., Weidlich, M. (eds.) BPMN 2012. LNBIP, vol. 125, pp. 98–106. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33155-8_8
Weske, M.: Business Process Management. Springer, Heidelberg (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73522-9
Corradini, F., Fornari, F., Muzi, C., Polini, A., Re, B., Tiezzi, F.: On avoiding erroneous synchronization in BPMN processes. In: Abramowicz, W. (ed.) BIS 2017. LNBIP, vol. 288, pp. 106–119. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59336-4_8
Corradini, F., Polini, A., Re, B., Tiezzi, F.: An operational semantics of BPMN collaboration. In: Braga, C., Ölveczky, P.C. (eds.) FACS 2015. LNCS, vol. 9539, pp. 161–180. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28934-2_9
Corradini, F., Muzi, C., Re, B., Rossi, L., Tiezzi, F.: Global vs. local semantics of BPMN 2.0 Or-Join. In: Tjoa, A.M., Bellatreche, L., Biffl, S., van Leeuwen, J., Wiedermann, J. (eds.) SOFSEM 2018. LNCS, vol. 10706, pp. 321–336. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73117-9_23
Corradini, F., Muzi, C., Re, B., Rossi, L., Tiezzi, F.: Animating multiple instances in BPMN collaborations. Technical report, University of Camerino (2018). http://pros.unicam.it/mida/
Pugliese, R., Tiezzi, F.: A calculus for orchestration of web services. J. Appl. Log. 10(1), 2–31 (2012)
Meyer, A., Pufahl, L., Fahland, D., Weske, M.: Modeling and enacting complex data dependencies in business processes. In: Daniel, F., Wang, J., Weber, B. (eds.) BPM 2013. LNCS, vol. 8094, pp. 171–186. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40176-3_14
Meyer, A., et al.: Data perspective in process choreographies: modeling and execution. In: Techn. Ber. BPM Center Report BPM-13-29 (2013). BPMcenter.org
Kheldoun, A., Barkaoui, K., Ioualalen, M.: Formal verification of complex business processes based on high-level Petri nets. Inf. Sci. 385–386, 39–54 (2017)
El-Saber, N.A.: CMMI-CM compliance checking of formal BPMN models using Maude. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Computer Science (2015)
Wohed, P., et al.: Pattern-based analysis of UML activity diagrams. Beta, Research School for Operations Management and Logistics, Eindhoven (2004)
Van Der Aalst, W.M., Ter Hofstede, A.H.: YAWL: yet another workflow language. Inf. Syst. 30(4), 245–275 (2005)
Gómez-López, M.T., Pérez-Álvarez, J.M., Varela-Vaca, A.J., Gasca, R.M.: Guiding the creation of choreographed processes with multiple instances based on data models. In: Dumas, M., Fantinato, M. (eds.) BPM 2016. LNBIP, vol. 281, pp. 239–251. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58457-7_18
Knuplesch, D., et al.: Data-aware interaction in distributed and collaborative workflows: modeling, semantics, correctness. In: CollaborateCom, pp. 223–232. IEEE (2012)
Hahn, M., Breitenbücher, U., Kopp, O., Leymann, F.: Modeling and execution of data-aware choreographies: an overview. Comput. Sci.-Res. Dev. 33, 1–12 (2017)
OASIS WS BPEL TC: Web Services Business Process Execution Language Version 2.0. Technical report, OASIS, April 2007
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Corradini, F., Muzi, C., Re, B., Rossi, L., Tiezzi, F. (2018). Animating Multiple Instances in BPMN Collaborations: From Formal Semantics to Tool Support. In: Weske, M., Montali, M., Weber, I., vom Brocke, J. (eds) Business Process Management. BPM 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11080. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98648-7_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98648-7_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98647-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-98648-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)