Abstract
For various applications in today’s service-oriented enterprise computing systems, such as process-oriented service discovering or clustering, it is necessary to measure the distance between two process models. In this paper, we propose a quantitative measure to calculate the distance or similarity between different block-structured processes. We first transform each process into a process structure tree, and then calculate the process distance based on the alignment of two process structure trees. The proposed distance metric satisfies four distance measure properties, i.e., non-negativity, identity of indiscernible, symmetry and triangle inequality. These properties make the distance metric can be used as a quantitative tool in effective process model management activities. We illustrate the methodology with examples, by which its features are shown. Moreover, experiment study shows that the proposed method is feasible.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Li, C., Reichert, M., Wombacher, A.: Discovering Reference Process Models by Mining Process Variants. In: 2008 IEEE International Conference on Web Services, pp. 45–53. IEEE Press, New York (2008)
Rosemann, M.: Potential Pitfalls of Process Modeling: part B. Business Process Management Journal 12(3), 377–384 (2006)
Jung, J.Y., Bae, J., Liu, L.: Hierarchical Business Process Clustering. In: 2008 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, pp. 613–616. IEEE Press, New York (2008)
Bae, J., Liu, L., Caverlee, J., Zhang, L.J., Bae, H.: Development of Distance Measures for Process Mining, Discovery and Integration. International Journal of Web Services Research 4(4), 1–17 (2007)
van Dongen, B., Dijkman, R., Mendling, J.: Measuring Similarity Between Business Process Models. In: Bellahsène, Z., Léonard, M. (eds.) CAiSE 2008. LNCS, vol. 5074, pp. 450–464. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
van der Aalst, W.M.P., Alves de Medeiros, A.K., Weijters, A.J.M.M.: Process Equivalence: Comparing Two Process Models Based on Observed Behavior. In: Dustdar, S., Fiadeiro, J.L., Sheth, A.P. (eds.) BPM 2006. LNCS, vol. 4102, pp. 129–144. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
van der Aalst, W.M.P., Basten, T.: Inheritance of Workflows: an Approach to Tackling Problems Related to Change. Theoretical Computer Science 270(1-2), 125–203 (2002)
Li, C., Reichert, M., Wombacher, A.: On Measuring Process Model Similarity Based on High-Level Change Operations. In: Li, Q., Spaccapietra, S., Yu, E., Olivé, A. (eds.) ER 2008. LNCS, vol. 5231, pp. 248–264. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Kiepuszewski, B., ter Hofstede, A.H.M., Bussler, C.J.: On Structured Workflow Modelling. In: Wangler, B., Bergman, L.D. (eds.) CAiSE 2000. LNCS, vol. 1789, pp. 431–445. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Reijers, H., Mendling, J.: Modularity in Process Models: Review and Effects. In: Dumas, M., Reichert, M., Shan, M.-C. (eds.) BPM 2008. LNCS, vol. 5240, pp. 20–35. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Vanhatalo, J., Vzer, H., Koehler, J.: The Refined Process Structure Tree. Data & Knowledge Engineering 68(9), 793–818 (2009)
Van Der Aalst, W.M.P., Ter Hofstede, A.H.M., Kiepuszewski, B., Barros, A.P.: Workflow Patterns. Distributed and Parallel Databases 14(7), 5–51 (2003)
Muehlen, M., Recker, J.: How Much Language is Enough? Theoretical and Practical Use of the Business Process Modeling Notation. In: Bellahsène, Z., Léonard, M. (eds.) CAiSE 2008. LNCS, vol. 5074, pp. 465–479. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Mendling, J., van Dongen, B.F., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Getting Rid of or-joins and Multiple Start Events in Business Process Models. Enterprise Information Systems 2(4), 403–419 (2008)
Mendling, J., Reijers, H.A., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Seven Process Modeling Guidelines (7pmg). Information and Software Technology 52, 127–136 (2010)
Hwang, S.Y., Wang, H., Tang, J., Srivastava, J.: A Probabilistic Approach to Modeling and Estimating the QoS of Web-Services-Based Workflows. Information Sciences 177(23), 5484–5503 (2007)
Tai, K.C.: The Tree-to-Tree Correction Problem. Journal of the ACM 26, 422–433 (1979)
Reichert, M., Dadam, P.: ADEPTflex-Supporting Dynamic Changes of Workflows Without Losing Control. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems 10(2), 93–129 (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Fu, X., Yue, K., Zou, P., Wang, F., Ji, K. (2012). A Process Distance Metric Based on Alignment of Process Structure Trees. In: Wang, H., et al. Web Technologies and Applications. APWeb 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7234. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29426-6_26
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29426-6_26
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-29425-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-29426-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)