Specifying artifact-centric business process models in UML: technical report

In recent years, the artifact-centric approach to process modeling has attracted a lot of attention. One of the research lines in this area is finding a suitable way to represent the dimensions in this approach. Bearing this in mind, this paper proposes a way to specify artifact-centric business process models by means of well-known UML diagrams, from a high-level of abstraction and with a technology-independent perspective. UML is a graphical language, widely used and with a precise semantics.Preprin

Verifiable UML Artifact-Centric Business Process Models (Extended Version)

Artifact-centric business process models have gained increasing momentum recently due to their ability to combine structural (i.e., data related) with dynamical (i.e., process related) aspects. In particular, two main lines of research have been pursued so far: one tailored to business artefact modeling languages and methodologies, the other focused on the foundations for their formal verification. In this paper, we merge these two lines of research, by showing how recent theoretical decidability results for verification can be fruitfully transferred to a concrete UML-based modeling methodology. In particular, we identify additional steps in the methodology that, in significant cases, guarantee the possibility of verifying the resulting models against rich first-order temporal properties. Notably, our results can be seamlessly transferred to different languages for the specification of the artifact lifecycles.Comment: Extended version of "Verifiable UML Artifact-Centric Business Process Models" - to appear in the Proceedings of CIKM 201

Conformance checking in UML artifact-centric business process models

Business artifacts have appeared as a new paradigm to capture the information required for the complete execution and reasoning of a business process. Likewise, conformance checking is gaining popularity as a crucial technique that enables evaluating whether recorded executions of a process match its corresponding model. In this paper, conformance checking techniques are incorporated into a general framework to specify business artifacts. By relying on the expressive power of an artifact-centric specification, BAUML, which combines UML state and activity diagrams (among others), the problem of conformance checking can be mapped into the Petri net formalism and its results be explained in terms of the original artifact-centric specification. In contrast to most existing approaches, ours incorporates data constraints into the Petri nets, thus achieving conformance results which are more precise. We have also implemented a plug-in, within the ProM framework, which is able to translate a BAUML into a Petri net to perform conformance checking. This shows the feasibility of our approach.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Ensuring the semantic correctness of a BAUML artifact-centric BPM

Context: Using models to represent business processes provides several advantages, such as facilitating the communication between the stakeholders or being able to check the correctness of the processes before their implementation. In contrast to traditional process modeling approaches, the artifact-centric approach treats data as a key element of the process, also considering the tasks or activities that are performed in it. Objective: This paper presents a way to verify and validate the semantic correctness of an artifact-centric business process model defined using a combination of UML and OCL models - a BAUML model. Method: We achieve our goal by presenting several algorithms that encode the initial models into first-order logic, which then allows to use an existing satisfiability checking tool to determine their correctness. Results: An approach to verify and validate an artifact-centric BPM specified in BAUML, which uses a combination of UML and OCL models. To do this, we provide a method to translate all BAUML components into a set of logic formulas. The result of this translation ensures that the only changes allowed are those specified in the model, and that those changes are taking place according the order established by the model. Having obtained this logic representation, these models can be validated by any existing reasoning method able to deal with negation of derived predicates. Moreover, we show how to automatically generate the relevant tests to validate the models. We also show the feasibility of our approach by implementing a prototype tool and applying it to a running example. Conclusion: It is feasible to ensure the semantic correctness of an artifact-centric business process model in practice.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Artifact-centric business process models in UML : specification and reasoning

Business processes are directly involved in the achievement of an organization's goals, and for this reason they should be performed in the best possible way. Modeling business processes can help to achieve this as, for instance, models can facilitate the communication between the people involved in the process, they provide a basis for process improvement and they can help perform process management. Processes can be modeled from many different perspectives. Traditional process modeling has followed the process-centric (or activity-centric) perspective, where the focus is on the sequencing of activities (i.e. the control flow), largely ignoring or underspecifying the data required by these tasks. In contrast, the artifact-centric (or data-centric) approach to process modeling focuses on defining the data required by the tasks and the details of the tasks themselves in terms of the changes they make to the data. The BALSA framework defines four dimensions which should be represented in any artifact-centric business process model: business artifacts, lifecycle, services (i.e. tasks) and associations. Using different types of models to represent these dimensions will result in distinct representations, whose differing characteristics (e.g. the degree of formality or understandability) will make them more appropriate for one purpose or another. Considering this, in the first part of this thesis we propose a framework, BAUML, for modeling business processes following an artifact-centric perspective. This framework is based on using a combination of UML and OCL models, and its goal is to have a final representation of the process which is both understandable and formal, to avoid ambiguities and errors. However, once a process model has been defined, it is important to ensure its quality. This will avoid the propagation of errors to the process's implementation. Although there are many different quality criteria, we focus on the semantic correctness of the model, answering questions such as "does it represent reality correctly?" or "are there any errors and contradictions in it?". Therefore, the second part of this thesis is concerned with finding a way to determine the semantic correctness of our BAUML models. We are interested in considering the BAUML model as a whole, including the meaning of the tasks. To do so, we first translate our models into a well-known framework, a DCDS (Data-centric Dynamic System) to which then modelchecking techniques can be applied. However, DCDSs have been defined theoretically and there is no tool that implements them. For this reason, we also created a prototype tool, AuRUS-BAUML, which is able to translate our BAUML models into logic and to reason on their semantic correctness using an existing tool, SVTe. The integration between AuRUS-BAUML and SVTe is transparent to the user. Logically, the thesis also presents the logic translation which is performed by the tool.Els processos de negoci estan directament relacionats amb els objectius de negoci, i per tant és important que aquests processos es duguin a terme de la millor manera possible. Optar per modelar-los pot ajudar a aconseguir-ho, ja que els models proporcionen nombrosos avantatges. Per exemple: faciliten la comunicació entre les parts involucrades en el procés, proporcionen una base a partir del qual millorar-lo, i poden ajudar a gestionar-lo. Els processos es poden modelar des de diferents perspectives. El modelat tradicional de processos s'ha basat molt en la perspectiva anomenada "process-centric" (centrada en processos) o "activity-centric" (centrada en activitats), que posa l'èmfasi en la seqüència d'activitats o tasques que s'han d'executar, ignorant en gran mesura les dades necessàries per dur a terme aquestes tasques. Per altra banda, la perspectiva "artifact-centric" (centrada en artefactes) o "data-centric" es basa en definir les dades que necessiten les tasques i els detalls de les tasques en si, representant els canvis que aquestes fan a les dades. El framework BALSA defineix quatre dimensions que haurien de representar-se en qualsevol model artifact-centric: els artefactes de negoci (business artifacts), els cicles de vida (lifecycles), els serveis (services) i les associacions (associations). Utilitzant diferents tipus de models per representar aquestes dimensions porta a obtenir diverses representacions amb característiques diferents. Aquesta varietat de característiques farà que els models resultants siguin més apropiats per un propòsit o per un altre. Considerant això, en la primera part d'aquesta tesi proposem un framework, BAUML, per modelar processos de negoci seguint una perspectiva artifact-centric. El framework es basa en utilitzar una combinació de models UML i OCL, i el seu objectiu és obtenir una representació final del procés que sigui a la vegada comprensible i formal, per tal d'evitar ambigüitats i errors. Un cop definit el procés, és important assegurar-ne la qualitat. Això evitarà la propagació d'errors a la implementació final del procés. Malgrat que hi ha molts criteris de qualitat diferents, ens centrarem en la correctesa semàntica del model, per respondre a preguntes com ara "representa la realitat correctament?" o "conté errors o contradiccions?". En conseqüència, la segona part d'aquesta tesi se centra en buscar una manera per determinar la correctesa semàntica d'un model BAUML. Ens interessa considerar el model com un tot, incloent el significat de les tasques (és a dir, el detall del que fan). Per aconseguir-ho, primer traduïm les tasques a un framework reconegut, DCDSs (Data-centric Dynamic Systems). Un cop obtingut, s'hi poden aplicar tècniques de model-checking per determinar si compleix certes propietats. Malauradament, els DCDSs s'han definit a nivell teòric i no hi ha cap eina que els implementi. Per aquest motiu, hem creat un prototip d'eina, AuRUS-BAUML, que és capaç de traduir els nostres models BAUML a lògica i aplicar-hi tècniques de raonament per determinar-ne la correctesa semàntica. Per la part de raonament, l'AuRUS-BAUML fa servir una eina existent, l'SVTe. La integració entre l'AuRUS-BAUML i l'SVTe és transparent de cara a l'usuari. Lògicament, la tesi també presenta la traducció a lògica que porta a terme l'eina.Postprint (published version

Artifact-centric business process models in UML : specification and reasoning

Business processes are directly involved in the achievement of an organization's goals, and for this reason they should be performed in the best possible way. Modeling business processes can help to achieve this as, for instance, models can facilitate the communication between the people involved in the process, they provide a basis for process improvement and they can help perform process management. Processes can be modeled from many different perspectives. Traditional process modeling has followed the process-centric (or activity-centric) perspective, where the focus is on the sequencing of activities (i.e. the control flow), largely ignoring or underspecifying the data required by these tasks. In contrast, the artifact-centric (or data-centric) approach to process modeling focuses on defining the data required by the tasks and the details of the tasks themselves in terms of the changes they make to the data. The BALSA framework defines four dimensions which should be represented in any artifact-centric business process model: business artifacts, lifecycle, services (i.e. tasks) and associations. Using different types of models to represent these dimensions will result in distinct representations, whose differing characteristics (e.g. the degree of formality or understandability) will make them more appropriate for one purpose or another. Considering this, in the first part of this thesis we propose a framework, BAUML, for modeling business processes following an artifact-centric perspective. This framework is based on using a combination of UML and OCL models, and its goal is to have a final representation of the process which is both understandable and formal, to avoid ambiguities and errors. However, once a process model has been defined, it is important to ensure its quality. This will avoid the propagation of errors to the process's implementation. Although there are many different quality criteria, we focus on the semantic correctness of the model, answering questions such as "does it represent reality correctly?" or "are there any errors and contradictions in it?". Therefore, the second part of this thesis is concerned with finding a way to determine the semantic correctness of our BAUML models. We are interested in considering the BAUML model as a whole, including the meaning of the tasks. To do so, we first translate our models into a well-known framework, a DCDS (Data-centric Dynamic System) to which then modelchecking techniques can be applied. However, DCDSs have been defined theoretically and there is no tool that implements them. For this reason, we also created a prototype tool, AuRUS-BAUML, which is able to translate our BAUML models into logic and to reason on their semantic correctness using an existing tool, SVTe. The integration between AuRUS-BAUML and SVTe is transparent to the user. Logically, the thesis also presents the logic translation which is performed by the tool.Els processos de negoci estan directament relacionats amb els objectius de negoci, i per tant és important que aquests processos es duguin a terme de la millor manera possible. Optar per modelar-los pot ajudar a aconseguir-ho, ja que els models proporcionen nombrosos avantatges. Per exemple: faciliten la comunicació entre les parts involucrades en el procés, proporcionen una base a partir del qual millorar-lo, i poden ajudar a gestionar-lo. Els processos es poden modelar des de diferents perspectives. El modelat tradicional de processos s'ha basat molt en la perspectiva anomenada "process-centric" (centrada en processos) o "activity-centric" (centrada en activitats), que posa l'èmfasi en la seqüència d'activitats o tasques que s'han d'executar, ignorant en gran mesura les dades necessàries per dur a terme aquestes tasques. Per altra banda, la perspectiva "artifact-centric" (centrada en artefactes) o "data-centric" es basa en definir les dades que necessiten les tasques i els detalls de les tasques en si, representant els canvis que aquestes fan a les dades. El framework BALSA defineix quatre dimensions que haurien de representar-se en qualsevol model artifact-centric: els artefactes de negoci (business artifacts), els cicles de vida (lifecycles), els serveis (services) i les associacions (associations). Utilitzant diferents tipus de models per representar aquestes dimensions porta a obtenir diverses representacions amb característiques diferents. Aquesta varietat de característiques farà que els models resultants siguin més apropiats per un propòsit o per un altre. Considerant això, en la primera part d'aquesta tesi proposem un framework, BAUML, per modelar processos de negoci seguint una perspectiva artifact-centric. El framework es basa en utilitzar una combinació de models UML i OCL, i el seu objectiu és obtenir una representació final del procés que sigui a la vegada comprensible i formal, per tal d'evitar ambigüitats i errors. Un cop definit el procés, és important assegurar-ne la qualitat. Això evitarà la propagació d'errors a la implementació final del procés. Malgrat que hi ha molts criteris de qualitat diferents, ens centrarem en la correctesa semàntica del model, per respondre a preguntes com ara "representa la realitat correctament?" o "conté errors o contradiccions?". En conseqüència, la segona part d'aquesta tesi se centra en buscar una manera per determinar la correctesa semàntica d'un model BAUML. Ens interessa considerar el model com un tot, incloent el significat de les tasques (és a dir, el detall del que fan). Per aconseguir-ho, primer traduïm les tasques a un framework reconegut, DCDSs (Data-centric Dynamic Systems). Un cop obtingut, s'hi poden aplicar tècniques de model-checking per determinar si compleix certes propietats. Malauradament, els DCDSs s'han definit a nivell teòric i no hi ha cap eina que els implementi. Per aquest motiu, hem creat un prototip d'eina, AuRUS-BAUML, que és capaç de traduir els nostres models BAUML a lògica i aplicar-hi tècniques de raonament per determinar-ne la correctesa semàntica. Per la part de raonament, l'AuRUS-BAUML fa servir una eina existent, l'SVTe. La integració entre l'AuRUS-BAUML i l'SVTe és transparent de cara a l'usuari. Lògicament, la tesi també presenta la traducció a lògica que porta a terme l'eina

Process-Centric Views of Data-Driven Business Artifacts

Declarative, data-aware workflow models are becoming increasingly pervasive. While these have numerous benefits, classical process-centric specifications retain certain advantages. Workflow designers are used to development tools such as BPMN or UML diagrams, that focus on control flow. Views describing valid sequences of tasks are also useful to provide stake-holders with high-level descriptions of the workflow, stripped of the accompanying data. In this paper we study the problem of recovering process-centric views from declarative, data-aware workflow specifications in a variant of IBM\u27s business artifact model. We focus on the simplest and most natural process-centric views, specified by finite-state transition systems, and describing regular languages. The results characterize when process-centric views of artifact systems are regular, using both linear and branching-time semantics. We also study the impact of data dependencies on regularity of the views

Kopernik : modeling business processes for digital customers

This paper presents the Kopernik methodology for modeling business processes for digital customers. These processes require a high degree of flexibility in the execution of their tasks or actions. We achieve this by using the artifact-centric approach to process modeling and the use of condition-action rules. The processes modeled following Kopernik can then be implemented in an existing commercial tool, Balandra.Preprin

Data in Business Process Models. A Preliminary Empirical Study

Traditional activity-centric process modeling languages treat data as simple black boxes acting as input or output for activities. Many alternate and emerging process modeling paradigms, such as case handling and artifact-centric process modeling, give data a more central role. This is achieved by introducing lifecycles and states for data objects, which is beneficial when modeling data-or knowledge-intensive processes. We assume that traditional activity-centric process modeling languages lack the capabilities to adequately capture the complexity of such processes. To verify this assumption we conducted an online interview among BPM experts. The results not only allow us to identify various profiles of persons modeling business processes, but also the problems that exist in contemporary modeling languages w.r.t. The modeling of business data. Overall, this preliminary empirical study confirms the necessity of data-awareness in process modeling notations in general

Existence dependency-based domain modeling for improving stateless process enactment.

In a process-enabled service oriented architecture, a process engine typically stores the state of the process instances during enactment. As an alternative, stateless process enactment entails that process state is derived from the state of business objects, which are organized in a domain model. The business objects are referred to in pre- and post-conditions of activities, which determine when the activity is enabled and completed, respectively. Despite the fact that the latter approach has multiple benefits compared with the former, the repeated state (re)calculations deteriorate performance and the formulation of clear conditions is not self-evident if typical domain modeling techniques (e.g. UML or ER) are adopted. In this paper we show that by adopting a specific domain modeling technique, which is based on the notion of existence dependency between the business objects, the performance and comprehensibility issues can proficiently be dealt with. We illustrate the technique using a real-world case from the insurance domain and analyze the emerging duality between process modeling and domain modeling.