Skip to main content

Efficient Behavioral-Difference Detection between Business Process Models

  • Conference paper
On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2014 Conferences (OTM 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 8841))

Abstract

Recently, business process management plays a more and more important role on the management of organizations. Business process models are used to enhance the efficiency of management and gain the control of (co)operations both within an organization and between business partners. Organizations, especially big enterprises, maintain thousands of process models and process models of the same category are with high similarity. For example, China Mobile Communication Corporation (CMCC) have more than 8000 processes in their office automation systems and the processes of the same business in different subsidiaries are with some variations. Therefore, to analyze and manage these similar process models, techniques are required to detect the differences between them. This paper focuses on detecting behavioral differences between process models. The current technique takes hours to compare the behaviors of two models in worst cases. Therefore, in this paper, an efficient technique is proposed by comparing dependency sets and trace sets of features in process models. Experiments show that the technique can detect behavioral differences between two models within seconds in worst cases, at least four orders of magnitude faster than existing techniques.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. van der Aalst, W.M.P., de Medeiros, A.K.A., Weijters, A.J.M.M.T.: 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)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Awad, A.: BPMN-Q: A language to query business processes. In: Proceedings of EMISA 2007, Nanjing, China, pp. 115–128 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Dijkman, R.: A classification of differences between similar Business Processes. In: EDOC 2007, pp. 37–37 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Dijkman, R.: Feedback on Differences between Business Processes. BETA Working Paper WP-234, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Dijkman, R.: Diagnosing differences between business process models. In: Dumas, M., Reichert, M., Shan, M.-C. (eds.) BPM 2008. LNCS, vol. 5240, pp. 261–277. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Dijkman, R., Dumas, M., Garcia-Banuelos, L., et al.: Aligning business process models. In: IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference, EDOC 2009, pp. 45–53. IEEE (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Dijkman, R., Dumas, M., Van Dongen, B., et al.: Similarity of business process models: Metrics and evaluation. Information Systems 36(2), 498–516 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Dijkman, R.M., van Dongen, B.F., Dumas, M., et al.: A Short Survey on Process Model Similarity. In: Seminal Contributions to Information Systems Engineering - 25 Years of CAISE, pp. 421–427 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Gao, X., Chen, Y., Ding, Z., et al.: Process Model Fragmentization, Clustering and Merging: An Empirical Study. In: BPM workshops: The 4th International Workshop on Process Model Collection: Management and Reuse, Beijing, China (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  10. ter Hofstede, A.H.M., Ouyang, C., La Rosa, M., et al.: APQL: A process-model query language. In: Asia Pacific Business Process Management, pp. 23–38 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Jin, T., Wang, J., Wu, N., La Rosa, M., ter Hofstede, A.H.M.: Efficient and Accurate Retrieval of Business Process Models through Indexing. In: Meersman, R., Dillon, T.S., Herrero, P. (eds.) OTM 2010. LNCS, vol. 6426, pp. 402–409. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Kunze, M., Weidlich, M., Weske, M.: Behavioral Similarity – A Proper Metric. In: Rinderle-Ma, S., Toumani, F., Wolf, K. (eds.) BPM 2011. LNCS, vol. 6896, pp. 166–181. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Küster, J.M., Gerth, C., Förster, A., Engels, G.: Detecting and Resolving Process Model Differences in the Absence of a Change Log. In: Dumas, M., Reichert, M., Shan, M.-C. (eds.) BPM 2008. LNCS, vol. 5240, pp. 244–260. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. La Rosa, M., Reijers, H.A., van der Aalst, W.M.P., Dijkman, R.M., Mendling, J., Dumas, M., Garcia-Banuelos, L.: APROMORE: an advanced process model repository. Expert Systems with Applications 38(6), 7029–7040 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Li, C., Reichert, M.U., Wombacher, A.: On Measuring Process Model Similarity based on High-level Change Operations. In: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 248–264 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Liu, K., Yan, Z., Wang, Y., Wen, L., Wang, J.: Efficient Syntactic Process Difference Detection using Flexible Feature Matching. In: The 2nd Asia Pacific Conference on Business Process Management (to appear, 2014)

    Google Scholar 

  17. M.J.: Metrics for Process Models: Empirical Foundations of Verification, Error Prediction, and Guidelines for Correctness. LNBIP, vol. 6. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Weidlich, M., Weske, M., Mendling, J.: Change propagation in process models using behavioral profiles. In: SCC 2009, pp. 33–40. IEEE (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Weidlich, M., Dijkman, R.M., Mendling, J.: The ICoP Framework: Identification of Correspondences between Process Models. In: Proceedings of the 22th CAiSE, Hammamet, Tunesia (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Yan, Z., Dijkman, R., Grefen, P.: Fast business process similarity search with feature-based similarity estimation. In: Meersman, R., Dillon, T.S., Herrero, P. (eds.) OTM 2010. LNCS, vol. 6426, pp. 60–77. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Yan, Z., Dijkman, R.M., Grefen, P.W.P.J.: Business Process Model Repositories - Framework and Survey. Information and Software Technology 54(4), 380–395 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Yan, Z., Dijkman, R.M., Grefen, P.W.P.J.: Fast Business Process Similarity Search. Distributed and Parallal Databases 30(2), 105–144 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Yan, Z., Dijkman, R., Grefen, P.: FNet: An index for advanced business process querying. In: Barros, A., Gal, A., Kindler, E. (eds.) BPM 2012. LNCS, vol. 7481, pp. 246–261. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Yan, Z., Wang, Y., Wen, L., Wang, J. (2014). Efficient Behavioral-Difference Detection between Business Process Models. In: Meersman, R., et al. On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2014 Conferences. OTM 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8841. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45563-0_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45563-0_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-45562-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-45563-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics