BPMN Collaboration Research Articles

A technique for discovering BPMN collaboration diagrams

A technique for discovering BPMN collaboration diagrams

Smart contract generation for inter‐organizational process collaboration

SummaryCurrently, inter‐organizational process collaboration (IOPC) has been widely used in the design and development of distributed systems that support business process execution. Blockchain‐based IOPC can establish trusted data sharing among participants, attracting more and more attention. The core of such study is to translate the graphical model (e.g., BPMN) into program code called smart contract that can be executed in the blockchain environment. In this context, a proper smart contract plays a vital role in the correct implementation of block‐chain‐based IOPC. In fact, the quality of graphical model affects the smart contract generation. Problematic models (e.g., deadlock) will result in incorrect contracts (causing unexpected behaviors). To avoid this undesired implementation, this article explores to generate smart contracts by using the verified formal model as input instead of graphical model. Specifically, we introduce a prototype framework that supports the automatic generation of smart contracts, providing an end‐to‐end solution from modeling, verification, translation to implementation. One of the cores of this framework is to provide a CSP#‐based formalization for the BPMN collaboration model from the perspective of message interaction. This formalization provides precise execution semantics and model verification for graphical models, and a verified formal model for smart contract generation. Another novelty is that it introduces a syntax tree‐based translation algorithm to directly map the formal model into a smart contract. The required formalism, verification, and translation techniques are transparent to users without imposing additional burdens. Finally, a set of experiments shows the effectiveness of the framework.

Conformance Between Choreography and Collaboration in BPMN Involving Multi-Instance Participants

AI-based process model analysis has attracted more and more interest. Model quality is crucial for such research. At present, inter-organizational business process (IOBP) has been widely used in the model design and development of the distributed system. Before implementing the intelligent analysis of the IOBP model, conformance as a foundation for model quality checking plays a key role because it ensures in advance that the participants can successfully interact without violating the global communication constraints imposed by the choreography. In fact, the multi-instance participant is a common requirement in IOBP. This paper provides a formal approach and framework supporting the conformance between BPMN choreography and collaboration while considering multi-instance participants and message communication modes. As a core, the formalization proposed is based on BNF syntax and structured CSP# processes. It can well support multi-instance features and multiple communication modes. Combined with CSP#, the formal definitions of communication modes and verification properties are given. On this basis, an integrated framework is provided to support automated formal verification referring to multiple communication modes. Finally, a set of experiments is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposal.

Consistent modelling of hierarchical BPMN collaborations

PurposeThis paper aims at supporting business process designers in modelling collaborative scenarios in terms of hierarchical BPMN collaboration diagrams, to enforce consistency among different hierarchical levels.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed approach is based on a set of guidelines to apply during the modelling of hierarchical diagrams. These guidelines address consistency issues related to the hiding capability provided by sub-process and call activity elements, which may obscure behaviours at inner levels, especially exchange of messages, that are inconsistent with those in other hierarchical levels. A laboratory experience validates the guidelines' effectiveness.FindingsThe paper points out the issues of hierarchical diagrams, and the lack of support in this context from the existing BPMN modelling tools. Moreover, through a laboratory experience, the paper shows the benefits carried by the proposed guidelines concerning the quality of the modelled diagrams.Practical implicationsThe proposed guidelines have been implemented in a consistency checking tool that avoids consistency errors during the modelling activity. To foster its usage, the tool has been integrated into the Eclipse BPMN modelling environment.Originality/valueThe paper, employing consistency guidelines, provides a novel solution to the weaknesses of hierarchical modelling.

A formal approach for the analysis of BPMN collaboration models

BPMN collaboration models have acquired increasing relevance in software development since they shorten the communication gap between domain experts and IT specialists and permit clarifying the characteristics of software systems needed to provide automatic support for the activities of complex organizations. Nonetheless, the lack of effective formal verification capabilities can hinder the full adoption of the BPMN standard by IT specialists, as it prevents precisely check the satisfaction of behavioral properties, with negative impacts on the quality of the software. To address these issues, this paper proposes BProVe, a novel verification approach for BPMN collaborations. This combines both standard model checking techniques, through the MAUDE’s LTL model checker, and statistical model checking techniques, through the statistical analyzer MultiVeStA. The latter makes BProVe effective also on those scenarios suffering from the state–space explosion problem, made even more acute by the presence of asynchronous message exchanges. To support the adoption of the BProVe approach, we propose a complete web-based tool-chain that allows for BPMN modeling, verification, and result exploration. The feasibility of BProVe has been validated both on synthetically-generated models and on models retrieved from two public repositories. The performed validation highlighted the importance and complementarity of the two supported verification strategies.

A First-Order Logic verification framework for communication-parametric and time-aware BPMN collaborations

The BPMN standard notation allows business process designers to model both intra-organizational processes and inter-organizational collaborations. A great effort has been devoted in proposing formal semantics for BPMN, and, fewer, in providing dedicated verification tools. Still, some advanced features of BPMN, namely communication or time-related constructs, are often set aside. This becomes an issue as BPMN gains interest outside of its original scope, e.g., for the IoT where communication and time play an important role. In this paper, we propose a formal semantics for a subset of BPMN. This semantics takes into account not only the usual gateways, but also sub-processes, inter-process communication, and time-related constructs. In contrast to transformational approaches, which give a semantics to BPMN by mapping it to some formal model (e.g., transition systems or Petri nets), our approach is based on a direct formalization in first-order logic that is then realized in a straightforward way into the TLA+ formal language. We build on the TLA+ model-checker, TLC, to provide process designers with a verification framework, fbpmn, that one may use to check BPMN and workflow specific properties. Our tools and our model database are open source and freely available online.

Well-structuredness, safeness and soundness: A formal classification of BPMN collaborations

The BPMN standard has a huge uptake in modelling business processes within the same organisation or collaborations involving multiple interacting participants. It is widely accepted by the Business Process Management community that a solid formal framework for the notation can help designers to properly understand their BPMN models as well as to state and verify model properties. With this aim in mind, we provide a formal characterisation of BPMN collaborations and some of the most significant correctness properties in the business process domain; namely, well-structuredness, safeness and soundness. We exploit this formalisation to classify BPMN models according to the properties they satisfy and their compositionality, resulting in a systematic study that gives evidence of expected results, closes conjectures and provides novel results. An experimentation to assess the impact of the considered properties on the practice of modelling is carried out on the BPMN models available in a public and populated repository.

Correctness checking for BPMN collaborations with sub-processes

BPMN collaboration models are commonly used to describe the behaviour and interactions of processes in an inter-organisational context. An important role in this kind of models is played both by the message flow, and by sub-processes. The interplay between these features of BPMN models can conceal subtle or unexpected effects, which makes the design activity error-prone, thus leading to the possible inclusion of incorrect behaviour. In this paper, we face this problem by providing a framework for checking the correctness of BPMN models. In particular we are interested on collaboration models that include message exchange and/or sub-processes, and with a special focus on properties well-established in the business process domain, namely safeness and soundness. To enable such a verification, we have (i) defined an operational semantics for BPMN collaborations, (ii) formalised safeness and soundness properties, and a new relaxed version of soundness for detecting situations where asynchronous messages are not handled correctly by the receiver, (iii) applied the related checks on state-space representations (i.e., labelled transition systems) of collaborations, and (iv) implemented the overall formal framework that has been also integrated in the Camunda modelling environment. The resulting verification framework and tool, named S3, have been validated in relation to its effectiveness, efficiency and usability, both by using models available on a publicly accessible repository, and by carrying out experiments with a group of designers.

Formalising and animating multiple instances in BPMN collaborations

The increasing adoption of modelling methods contributes to a better understanding of the flow of processes, from the internal behaviour of a single organisation to a wider perspective where several organisations exchange messages. In this regard, BPMN collaborations provide a suitable modelling abstraction. Even if this is a widely accepted notation, only a limited effort has been expended in formalising its semantics, especially for what it concerns the interplay among control features, data handling and exchange of messages in scenarios requiring multiple instances of interacting participants. In this paper, we face the problem of providing a formal semantics for BPMN collaborations including elements dealing with multiple instances, i.e., multi-instance pools and sequential/parallel multi-instance tasks. For an accurate account of these features, it is necessary to consider the data perspective of collaboration models, thus supporting data objects, data collections and data stores, and different execution modalities of tasks concerning atomicity and concurrency. Beyond defining a novel formalisation, we also provide a BPMN collaboration animator tool, named MIDA, faithfully implementing the formal semantics. MIDA can also support designers in debugging multi-instance collaboration models.

The Influence of Using Collapsed Sub-processes and Groups on the Understandability of Business Process Models

Many factors influence the creation of business process models which are understandable for a target audience. Understandability of process models becomes more critical when size and complexity of the models increase. Using vertical modularization to decompose such models hierarchically into modules is considered to improve their understandability. To investigate this assumption, two experiments were conducted. The experiments involved 2 large-scale real-life business process models that were modeled using BPMN v2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation) in the form of collaboration diagrams. Each process was modeled in 3 modularity forms: fully-flattened, flattened where activities are clustered using BPMN groups, and modularized using separately viewed BPMN sub-processes. The objective was to investigate if and how different forms of modularity representation (used for vertical modularization) in BPMN collaboration diagrams influence the understandability of process models. In addition to the forms of modularity representation, the presentation medium (paper vs. computer) and model reader’s level of business process modeling competency were investigated as factors that potentially influence model comprehension. 60 business practitioners from a large organization and 140 graduate students participated in our experiments. The results indicate that, when these three modularity representations are considered, it is best to present the model in a ‘flattened’ form (with or without the use of groups) and in the ‘paper’ format in order to optimally understand a BPMN model. The results also show that the model reader’s business process modeling competency is an important factor of process model comprehension.

A Classification of BPMN Collaborations based on Safeness and Soundness Notions

BPMN 2.0 standard has a huge uptake in modelling business processes within the same organisation or collaborations involving multiple interacting participants. It results that providing a solid foundation to enable BPMN designers to understand their models in a consistent way is becoming more and more important. In our investigation we define and exploit a formal characterisation of the collaborations' semantics, specifically and directly given for BPMN models, to provide a classification of BPMN collaborations. In particular, we refer to collaborations involving processes with arbitrary topology, thus overcoming the well-structuredness limitations. The proposed classification is based on some of the most important correctness properties in the business process domain, namely safeness and soundness. We prove, with a uniform formal framework, some conjectured and expected results and, most of all, we achieve novel results for BPMN collaborations concerning the relationships between safeness and soundness, and their compositionality, that represent major advances in the state-of-the-art.