Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Querying process models by behavior inclusion

  • Special Section Paper
  • Published:
Software & Systems Modeling Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Business processes are vital to managing organizations as they sustain a company’s competitiveness. Consequently, these organizations maintain collections of hundreds or thousands of process models for streamlining working procedures and facilitating process implementation. Yet, the management of large process model collections requires effective searching capabilities. Recent research focused on similarity search of process models, but querying process models is still a largely open topic. This article presents an approach to querying process models that takes a process example as input and discovers all models that allow replaying the behavior of the query. To this end, we provide a notion of behavioral inclusion that is based on trace semantics and abstraction. Additional to deciding a match, a closeness score is provided that describes how well the behavior of the query is represented in the model and can be used for ranking. The article introduces the formal foundations of the approach and shows how they are applied to querying large process model collections. An experimental evaluation has been conducted that confirms the suitability of the solution as well as its applicability and scalability in practice.

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

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. http://code.google.com/p/jbpt/.

  2. http://lucene.apache.org/core/.

References

  1. Aalst, W.M.P.V.D., Medeiros, A.K.A.D., Weijters, A.J.M.M.: Process equivalence: comparing two process models based on observed behavior. In: International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM 2006), vol. 4102 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 129–144. Springer (2006)

  2. Akkiraju, R., Ivan, A.: Discovering business process similarities: an empirical study with SAP best practice business processes. In: Service-Oriented Computing, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6470, pp. 515–526. Springer (2010)

  3. Awad, A., Decker, G., Lohmann, N.: Diagnosing and repairing data anomalies in process models. In: Rinderle-Ma, S., Sadiq S.W., Leymann F. (eds.) Business Process Management Workshops, Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol. 43, pp. 5–16. Springer (2009)

  4. Awad, A., Polyvyanyy, A., Weske, M.: Semantic querying of business process models. In: Proceedings of the 2008 12th International IEEE Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference, pp. 85–94. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2008). doi:10.1109/EDOC.2008.11

  5. Awad, A., Sakr, S., Kunze, M., Weske, M.: Design by selection: a reuse-based approach for business process modeling. In: Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER’11. Springer

  6. Basten, T., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Inheritance of behavior. J. Log. Algebr. Program. 47(2), 47–145 (2001)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  7. Becker, M., Laue, R.: A comparative survey of business process similarity measures. Comput. Ind. 63(2), 148–167 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Beeri, C., Eyal, A., Kamenkovich, S., Milo, T.: Querying business processes with bp-ql. Inf. Syst. 33(6), 477–507 (2008). doi:10.1016/j.is.2008.02.005

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Belhajjame, K., Brambilla, M.: Ontology-based description and discovery of business processes. In: Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling, Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol. 29, pp. 85–98. Springer, Berlin (2009)

  10. Beyer, K., Goldstein, J., Ramakrishnan, R., Shaft, U.: When is “nearest neighbor” meaningful? In. In International Conference on Database Theory, pp. 217–235 (1999)

  11. Bose, R.P.J.C., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Trace alignment in process mining: opportunities for process diagnostics. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Business Process Management, BPM’10, pp. 227–242. Springer, Berlin (2010)

  12. Branco, M.C., Troya, J., Czarnecki, K., Küster, J.M., Völzer, H.: Matching business process workflows across abstraction levels. In: R.B. France, J. Kazmeier, R. Breu, C. Atkinson (eds.) MoDELS, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 7590, pp. 626–641. Springer (2012)

  13. Bunke, H., Allermann, G.: Inexact graph matching for structural pattern recognition. Pattern Recognit. Lett. 1(4), 245–253 (1983). doi:10.1016/0167-8655(83)90033-8

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  14. Bunke, H., Shearer, K.: A graph distance metric based on the maximal common subgraph. Pattern Recogn. Lett. 19, 255–259 (1998)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Choi, I., Kim, K., Jang, M.: An xml-based process repository and process query language for integrated process management. Knowl. Process Manag. 14(4), 303–316 (2007). doi:10.1002/kpm.290

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Cohen, W.W., Ravikumar, P.D., Fienberg, S.E.: A comparison of string distance metrics for name-matching tasks. In: S. Kambhampati, C.A. Knoblock (eds.) IIWeb, pp. 73–78 (2003)

  17. Curran, T., Keller, G., Ladd, A.: SAP R/3 Business Blueprint: Understanding the Business Process Reference Model. Prentice-Hall Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Decker, G., Mendling, J.: Process instantiation. Data Knowl. Eng. 68, 777–792 (2009). doi:10.1016/j.datak.2009.02.013

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Desel, J., Esparza, J.: Free-Choice Petri Nets. Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1995)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  20. Deutch, D., Milo, T.: Querying structural and behavioral properties of business processes. In: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Database Programming languages, DBPL’07, pp. 169–185. Springer, Berlin (2007)

  21. Dijkman, R., Dumas, M., van Dongen, B., Käärik, R., Mendling, J.: Similarity of business process models: metrics and evaluation. Inf. Syst. 36(2), 498–516 (2011). doi:10.1016/j.is.2010.09.006. Special Issue: Semantic Integration of Data, Multimedia, and Services

    Google Scholar 

  22. Dijkman, R.M., Dumas, M., García-Bañuelos, L., Käärik, R.: Aligning business process models. In: EDOC, pp. 45–53. IEEE Computer Society (2009)

  23. Dijkman, R.M., Dumas, M., Ouyang, C.: Semantics and analysis of business process models in bpmn. Inf. Softw. Technol. 50(12), 1281–1294 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Dijkman, R.M., Rosa, M.L., Reijers, H.A.: Managing large collections of business process models: current techniques and challenges. Comput. Ind. 63(2), 91–97 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Dumas, M., García-Bañuelos, L., Dijkman, R.M.: Similarity search of business process models. IEEE Data Eng. Bull. 32(3), 23–28 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Ehrig, M., Koschmider, A., Oberweis, A.: Measuring similarity between semantic business process models. In: APCCM ’07: Proceedings of the 4th Asia-Pacific Conference on Conceptual Modelling, pp. 71–80. Australian Computer Society Inc., Darlinghurst, Australia (2007)

  27. Eshuis, R., Grefen, P.: Structural matching of BPEL processes. In: Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Web Services, pp. 171–180. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2007). doi:10.1109/ECOWS.2007.26

  28. Euzenat, J., Shvaiko, P.: Ontology Matching. Springer, Berlin (2007)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  29. Fahland, D., Favre, C., Jobstmann, B., Koehler, J., Lohmann, N., Völzer, H., Wolf, K.: Instantaneous soundness checking of industrial business process models. In: U. Dayal, J. Eder, J. Koehler, H.A. Reijers (eds.) BPM, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 5701, pp. 278–293. Springer (2009)

  30. Gerke, K., Cardoso, J., Claus, A.: Measuring the compliance of processes with reference models. In: On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2009, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 5870, pp. 76–93. Springer, Berlin (2009)

  31. Grigori, D., Corrales, J.C., Bouzeghoub, M.: Behavioral matchmaking for service retrieval. In: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Web Services, pp. 145–152. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2006). doi:10.1109/ICWS.2006.37

  32. Hack, M.: Decidability questions for petri nets. Ph.D. thesis, M.I.T. (1976)

  33. Hoare, C.A.R.: A Model for Communicating Sequential Processes. Tech. rep., Oxford University Computing Laboratory (1980)

  34. Jin, T., Wang, J., Wen, L.: Efficient retrieval of similar business process models based on structure. In: On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2011, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 7044, pp. 56–63. Springer, Berlin (2011)

  35. Jin, T., Wang, J., Wen, L.: Querying business process models based on semantics. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications: Part II, DASFAA’11, pp. 164–178. Springer, Berlin (2011)

  36. Jin, T., Wang, J., Wen, L.: Efficient retrieval of similar workflow models based on behavior. In: Web Technologies and Applications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 7235, pp. 677–684. Springer, Berlin (2012)

  37. Jin, T., Wang, J., Wu, N., Rosa, M.L., ter Hofstede, A.H.M.: Efficient and accurate retrieval of business process models through indexing—(short paper). In: Meersman et al. [54], pp. 402–409

  38. Jung, J.Y., Bae, J., Liu, L.: Hierarchical business process clustering. In: IEEE SCC (2), pp. 613–616. IEEE Computer Society (2008)

  39. Kiepuszewski, B., Hofstede, A.H.M.T., van der Aalst, W.: Fundamentals of control flow in workflows. Acta Inform 39, 143–209 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Knuth, D.E.: The Art of Computer Programming, vol. 3: Sorting and Searching, 2nd edn. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA (1973)

    Google Scholar 

  41. Koschmider, A.: Ähnlichkeitsbasierte Modellierungsunterstützung für Geschäftsprozesse. Ph.D. thesis, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften (2007)

  42. Kunze, M., Weidlich, M., Weske, M.: Behavioral similarity: a proper metric. In: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Business Process Management, BPM ’11, pp. 166–181. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)

  43. Kunze, M., Weske, M.: Metric trees for efficient similarity search in process model repositories. In: Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Process in the Large (IW-PL ’10). Hoboken, NJ (2010)

  44. Kunze, M., Weske, M.: Local behavior similarity. In: BPMDS 2012 and EMMSAD 2012, LNBIP, vol. 113, pp. 107–120. Springer (2012)

  45. Leopold, H., Niepert, M., Weidlich, M., Mendling, J., Dijkman, R.M., Stuckenschmidt, H.: Probabilistic optimization of semantic process model matching. In: A.P. Barros, A. Gal, E. Kindler (eds.) BPM, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 7481, pp. 319–334. Springer (2012)

  46. Levenshtein, V.: Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions and reversals. Sov. Phys. Doklady 10, 707 (1966)

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  47. Li, C., Reichert, M., Wombacher, A.: On measuring process model similarity based on high-level change operations. In: Q. Li, S. Spaccapietra, E.S.K. Yu, A. Olivé (eds.) ER, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 5231, pp. 248–264. Springer (2008)

  48. Lipkus, A.: A proof of the triangle inequality for the Tanimoto distance. J. Math. Chem. 26, 263–265 (1999)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  49. Lohmann, N., Verbeek, E., Dijkman, R.: Petri net transformations for business processes: a survey. In: Transactions on Petri Nets and Other Models of Concurrency, chap. 2, pp. 46–63. Springer, Berlin (2009)

  50. Lu, R., Sadiq, S.: On the discovery of preferred work practice through business process variants. In: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER’07, pp. 165–180. Springer, Berlin (2007)

  51. Manning, C.D., Schütze, H.: Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (1999)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  52. Markovic, I., Costa Pereira, A., Francisco, D., Mu noz, H.: Querying in Business Process Modeling, pp. 234–245 (2007)

  53. Markovic, I., Pereira, A.C.: Towards a formal framework for reuse in business process modeling. In: Business Process Management Workshops, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4928, pp. 484–495. Springer, Berlin (2007). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-78238-4-49. http://www.springerlink.com/content/xqg31444r0255660/

  54. Meersman, R., Dillon, T.S., Herrero, P. (eds.): On the move to meaningful internet systems: OTM 2010—Confederated International Conferences: CoopIS, IS, DOA and ODBASE, Hersonissos, Crete, Greece, October 25–29, 2010, Proceedings, Part I, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6426. Springer (2010)

  55. Mendling, J.: Metrics for Process Models: Empirical Foundations of Verification, Error Prediction, and Guidelines for Correctness, Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol. 6. Springer (2008)

  56. Miller, G.A.: Wordnet: a lexical database for english. Commun. ACM 38, 39–41 (1995). doi:10.1145/219717.219748

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Nejati, S., Sabetzadeh, M., Chechik, M., Easterbrook, S., Zave, P.: Matching and merging of statecharts specifications. In: Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE ’07, pp. 54–64. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2007). doi:10.1109/ICSE.2007.50

  58. Preparata, F.P., Shamos, M.I.: Computational Geometry: An Introduction. Springer, New York (1985)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  59. Reisig, W.: Petri Nets: An Introduction, Monographs in Theoretical Computer Science. An EATCS Series, vol. 4. Springer (1985)

  60. Rosemann, M.: Potential pitfalls of process modeling: part B. Bus. Process Manag. J. 12(3), 377–384 (2006). doi:10.1108/14637150610668024

    Article  Google Scholar 

  61. Sakr, S., Al-Naymat, G.: Graph indexing and querying: a review. Int. J. Web Inf. Syst. 6(2), 101–120 (2010). doi:10.1108/17440081011053104. http://www.emeraldinsight.com

    Google Scholar 

  62. Sakr, S., Awad, A., Kunze, M.: Querying process models repositories by aggregated graph search. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Reuse in BPM, p. (to appear) (2012)

  63. Shao, Q., Sun, P., Chen, Y.: Wise: A workflow information search engine. In: Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering, pp. 1491–1494. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2009). doi:10.1109/ICDE.2009.89

  64. Sokolsky, O., Kannan, S., Lee, I.: Simulation-based graph similarity. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS’06), pp. 426–440 (2006)

  65. Song, L., Wang, J., Wen, L., Wang, W., Tan, S., Kong, H.: Querying process models based on the temporal relations between tasks. In: Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE 15th International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference Workshops, EDOCW ’11, pp. 213–222. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2011) doi:10.1109/EDOCW.2011.12

  66. Uba, R., Dumas, M., García-Bañuelos, L., Rosa, M.L.: Clone detection in repositories of business process models. In: S. Rinderle-Ma, F. Toumani, K. Wolf (eds.) BPM, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6896, pp. 248–264. Springer (2011)

  67. Valmari, A.: The state explosion problem. In: Petri Nets, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1491, pp. 429–528. Springer (1996)

  68. van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Verification of workflow nets. In: ICATPN ’97: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets, pp. 407–426. Springer, London (1997)

  69. van der Aalst, W.M.P.: The application of petri nets to workflow management. J. Circ. Syst. Comput. 8(1), 21–66 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  70. Vanhatalo, J., Völzer, H., Leymann, F., Moser, S.: Automatic workflow graph refactoring and completion. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing, ICSOC ’08, pp. 100–115. Springer, Berlin (2008)

  71. Wang, J., He, T., Wen, L., Wu, N., Ter Hofstede, A.H.M., Su, J.: A behavioral similarity measure between labeled petri nets based on principal transition sequences. In: Proceedings of the 2010 International Conference on On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems, vol. Part I, OTM’10, pp. 394–401. Springer, Berlin (2010)

  72. Weidlich, M., Dijkman, R., Mendling, J.: The icop framework: identification of correspondences between process models. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE’10, pp. 483–498. Springer, Berlin (2010)

  73. Weidlich, M., Elliger, F., Weske, M.: Generalised computation of behavioural profiles based on petri-net unfoldings. In: M. Bravetti, T. Bultan (eds.) WS-FM, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6551, pp. 101–115. Springer (2010)

  74. Weidlich, M., Mendling, J., Weske, M.: Efficient consistency measurement based on behavioral profiles of process models. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 37(3), 410–429 (2011)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  75. Weidlich, M., van der Werf, J.M.E.M.: On profiles and footprints—relational semantics for petri nets. In: S. Haddad, L. Pomello (eds.) Petri Nets, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 7347, pp. 148–167. Springer (2012)

  76. Yan, Z., Dijkman, R.M., Grefen, P.: Fast Business Process Similarity Search with Feature-Based Similarity Estimation. In: Meersman et al. [56], pp. 60–77

  77. Zezula, P., Amato, G., Dohnal, V., Batko, M.: Similarity Search: The Metric Space Approach. Springer, Secaucus, NJ (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  78. Zha, H., Wang, J., Wen, L., Wang, C., Sun, J.: A workflow net similarity measure based on transition adjacency relations. Comput. Ind. 61(5), 463–471 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  79. Zloof, M.M.: Query by example. In: Proceedings of the May 19–22, 1975, National Computer Conference and Exposition, AFIPS ’75, pp. 431–438. ACM, New York, NY (1975). doi:10.1145/1499949.1500034

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Matthias Kunze & Mathias Weske

  2. Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

    Matthias Weidlich

Authors
  1. Matthias Kunze
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Matthias Weidlich
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Mathias Weske
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthias Weidlich.

Additional information

Communicated by Dr. Selmin Nurcan.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Kunze, M., Weidlich, M. & Weske, M. Querying process models by behavior inclusion. Softw Syst Model 14, 1105–1125 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-013-0389-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-013-0389-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation