Weak Conformance between Process Models and Synchronized Object Life Cycles

Abstract

Process models specify behavioral execution constraints between activities as well as between activities and data objects. A data object is characterized by its states and state transitions represented as object life cycle. For process execution, all behavioral execution constraints must be correct. Correctness can be verified via soundness checking which currently only considers control flow information. For data correctness, conformance between a process model and its object life cycles is checked. Current approaches abstract from dependencies between multiple data objects and require fully specified process models although, in real-world process repositories, often underspecified models are found. Coping with these issues, we apply the notion of weak conformance to process models to tell whether each time an activity needs to access a data object in a particular state, it is guaranteed that the data object is in or can reach the expected state. Further, we introduce an algorithm for an integrated verification of control flow correctness and weak data conformance using soundness checking.