Combining SDBC and ISDL in the Modeling and Refinement of Business Processes

Abstract

Focusing on the alignment between business requirements and application (software) functionality, the SDBC approach considers three viewpoints complementing each other, namely statics, dynamics, and information. Next to that, the approach addresses systematically and separately business modeling and application design, applying the mentioned viewpoints to both of them. The approach also allows for an adequate extension of its ‘dynamic‘ business modeling, acknowledging the real-life complexity that includes communication and coordination issues, such as meanings, intentions, commitments, and obligations. Hence, in order to consider appropriately these (communication and coordination - related) issues as complementing its dynamic business modeling, SDBC applies at least two modeling techniques. The transformation between them nevertheless complicates the modeling process; furthermore, different techniques use different modeling formalisms whose reflection sometimes causes limitations. For this reason, we explore in the current paper the value which the modeling language ISDL (allowing for useful refinement of business process models) could bring to SDBC, particularly in the elaboration of dynamic (behavioral) business models with real-life aspects. We also explore how SDBC can benefit from ISDL-related methods assessing whether a realized refinement conforms to the original process model. The results reported in this work are usefully supported by an illustrative example.