Automated Mapping of UML Activity Diagrams to Formal Specifications for Supporting Containment Checking

Business analysts and domain experts are often sketching the behaviors of a software system using high-level models that are technology- and platform-independent. The developers will refine and enrich these high-level models with technical details. As a consequence, the refined models can deviate from the original models over time, especially when the two kinds of models evolve independently. In this context, we focus on behavior models; that is, we aim to ensure that the refined, low-level behavior models conform to the corresponding high-level behavior models. Based on existing formal verification techniques, we propose containment checking as a means to assess whether the system's behaviors described by the low-level models satisfy what has been specified in the high-level counterparts. One of the major obstacles is how to lessen the burden of creating formal specifications of the behavior models as well as consistency constraints, which is a tedious and error-prone task when done manually. Our approach presented in this paper aims at alleviating the aforementioned challenges by considering the behavior models as verification inputs and devising automated mappings of behavior models onto formal properties and descriptions that can be directly used by model checkers. We discuss various challenges in our approach and show the applicability of our approach in illustrative scenarios.Comment: In Proceedings FESCA 2014, arXiv:1404.043

Visualization of Business Process Modeling Anti Patterns

Patterns are used to capture and document frequent design activities. Patterns are means to compare the expressiveness of different modeling languages. On the other hand, the term $anti-pattern$ points to undesirable design activities. In the field of business process modeling, useful patterns were collected to help evaluate models and tools. Nevertheless, there was almost no work to capture the unwanted design patterns. The most common way to model business processes is to use a graphical modeling language. The most widespread notation are business process diagrams modeled in the language BPMN. In this paper, we formalize structural patterns that can lead to control flow errors in such graphical models. For expressing such error patterns, we use the visual query language BPMN-Q . By using a query processor, a business process modeler is able to identify possible errors in business process diagrams. Moreover, the erroneous parts of the business process diagram can be highlighted when an instance of an error pattern is found. This way, the modeler gets an easy-to-understand feedback in the visual modeling language he or she is familiar with

A novel workflow management system for handling dynamic process adaptation and compliance

Modern enterprise organisations rely on dynamic processes. Generally these processes cannot be modelled once and executed repeatedly without change. Enterprise processes may evolve unpredictably according to situations that cannot always be prescribed. However, no mechanism exists to ensure an updated process does not violate any compliance requirements. Typical workflow processes may follow a process definition and execute several thousand instances using a workflow engine without any changes. This is suitable for routine business processes. However, when business processes need flexibility, adaptive features are needed. Updating processes may violate compliance requirements so automatic verification of compliance checking is necessary. The research work presented in this Thesis investigates the problem of current workflow technology in defining, managing and ensuring the specification and execution of business processes that are dynamic in nature, combined with policy standards throughout the process lifycle. The findings from the literature review and the system requirements are used to design the proposed system architecture. Since a two-tier reference process model is not sufficient as a basis for the reference model for an adaptive and compliance workflow management system, a three-tier process model is proposed. The major components of the architecture consist of process models, business rules and plugin modules. This architecture exhibits the concept of user adaptation with structural checks and dynamic adaptation with data-driven checks. A research prototype - Adaptive and Compliance Workflow Management System (ACWfMS) - was developed based on the proposed system architecture to implement core services of the system for testing and evaluation purposes. The ACWfMS enables the development of a workflow management tool to create or update the process models. It automatically validates compliance requirements and, in the case of violations, visual feedback is presented to the user. In addition, the architecture facilitates process migration to manage specific instances with modified definitions. A case study based on the postgraduate research process domain is discussed

A Practical Data-Flow Verification Scheme for Business Processes

Data in business processes is becoming more and more important. Current standards for process-modeling languages like BPMN 2.0 which include the data flow reflect this. Ensuring the correctness of the data flow in processes is challenging. Model checking, i. e., verifying properties of process models, is a well-known technique to this end. An important part of model checking is the construction of the state space of the model. State-space explosion however typically is in the way of an effective verification. We study how to overcome this problem in our context by means of reduction. More specifically, we propose a reduction on the level of the process model. To our knowledge, this is new for the data-flow analysis of processes. To accomplish this, we specify regions relevant for the verification of properties describing the data flow. Our evaluation shows that our approach works well on real process models

Checking and improving business process models in BPMN2

Business Process Modeling (BPM) is a systems engineering activity where we rep- resent the processes of an enterprise, so they can be shared, understood and improved. Despite the set of innovative tools for BPM modelling that exist in the market, they allow modelers to introduce errors during the modelling process. As there is no idea which errors the tools do not detect, what are the most recurrent errors and how could this prob- lem be mitigated, this dissertation presents a study and a proposal to help solving this problem. Firstly, a tool survey was developed to describe the state of the practice on the ability of Modelling Tools to validate BPMN2 models and determine the most recurrent defects introduced by BPMN modellers. Secondly, based on an empirical study using the QUASAR validator we provide evidence on its ability to validate a set of well-formedness rules and best practices and therefore detect errors in BPMN2 Models. Finally, we want to understand if this metamodelling-based validation facility can be used to prevent intro- ducing modelling errors, while speeding up the learning curve.A Modelação de Processos de Negócio (MPN) é uma atividade de engenharia de sistemas onde representamos os processos de uma empresa, para que os mesmos possam ser partilhados, compreendidos e melhorados. Apesar do elevado número de ferramentas de MPN existentes no mercado, estas permitem aos modeladores introduzir erros du- rante o processo de modelação. Como não existe uma ideia clara acerca de quais os erros que as ferramentas não detetam, quais os erros cometidos mais recorrentemente e como o problema pode ser resolvido, esta dissertação apresenta um estudo e uma proposta para resolver o problema. Inicialmente foi efetuado um levantamento do estado da prática da capacidade das ferramentas de modelação para validar os modelos em BPMN2, e determinar os erros mais frequentemente introduzidos pelos modeladores. Em seguida, baseado num estudo empírico, usando o validador QUASAR, fornecemos evidências sobre a sua capacidade para validar o conjunto de regras de boa formação e boas práticas na modelação de processos de negócio e assim detetar os erros introduzidos nos modelos em BPMN2. Finalmente, queremos compreender se esta facilidade de validação baseada em metamodelos pode ser usada para prevenir a introdução de erros durante o processo de modelação de processos de negócio, acelerando assim a curva de aprendizagem do modelador

Enhancing the correctness of BPMN models

While some of the OMG's metamodels include a formal specification of well-formedness rules, using OCL, the BPMN metamodel specification only includes those rules in natural language. Although several BPMN tools claim to support, at least partly, the OMG's BPMN specification, we found that the mainstream of BPMN tools do not enforce most of the prescribed BPMN rules. Furthermore, the verification of BPMN process models publicly available showed that a relevant percentage of those BPMN process models fail in complying with the well-formedness rules of the BPMN specification. The enforcement of process model's correctness is relevant for the sake of better quality of process modeling and to attain models amenable of being enacted. In this chapter we propose supplement the BPMN metamodel with well-formedness rules expressed as OCL invariants in order to enforce BPMN models' correctness.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

BProVe: A formal verification framework for business process models

Business Process Modelling has acquired increasing relevance in software development. Available notations, such as BPMN, permit to describe activities of complex organisations. On the one hand, this shortens the communication gap between domain experts and IT specialists. On the other hand, this permits to clarify the characteristics of software systems introduced to provide automatic support for such activities. Nevertheless, the lack of formal semantics hinders the automatic verification of relevant properties. This paper presents a novel verification framework for BPMN 2.0, called BProVe. It is based on an operational semantics, implemented using MAUDE, devised to make the verification general and effective. A complete tool chain, based on the Eclipse modelling environment, allows for rigorous modelling and analysis of Business Processes. The approach has been validated using more than one thousand models available on a publicly accessible repository. Besides showing the performance of BProVe, this validation demonstrates its practical benefits in identifying correctness issues in real models