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Delta-BPMN: A Concrete Language and Verifier for Data-Aware BPMN

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Business Process Management (BPM 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12875))

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Abstract

The increasing recognition of the need for integrating data and processes, both at conceptual and system levels, raises a new demand in standard-friendly, verifiable data-aware process modelling languages. So far, a few proposals in the area have been largely focusing on either uncharted approaches or conceptual proposals that would lack in tool support. In this work, we propose delta-BPMN – a verifiable operational framework for data-aware processes that employs (block-structured) BPMN to capture the process backbone, and a SQL-based language for representing and manipulating volatile and persistent data. We also propose a proof-of-concept implementation of delta-BPMN by realising the front-end part in Camunda and the back-end in a framework that translates language specifications into the executable code of a state-of-the-art SMT-based model checker.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://camunda.com.

  2. 2.

    http://users.mat.unimi.it/users/ghilardi/mcmt/.

  3. 3.

    This latter feature is currently not supported by the implementation, but it will be supported soon. The page https://tinyurl.com/y6npo4kz provides a continuously updated list of the most recent, newly added features.

  4. 4.

    The example builds on a model from Business Process Incubator (see https://tinyurl.com/8au7xfmw) enriched with data by analogy with a similar model from the benchmark in [16].

  5. 5.

    This disambiguates the situation where the same relation \( R \) is used in the update precondition with some of its attributes both appearing in the and some of the clauses.

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Acknowledgments

This research has been partially supported by the UNIBZ projects REKAP, VERBA and DUB. We would like to thank Davide Cremonini for contributing to the initial phase of the delta-BPMN implementation.

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Correspondence to Andrey Rivkin .

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Ghilardi, S., Gianola, A., Montali, M., Rivkin, A. (2021). Delta-BPMN: A Concrete Language and Verifier for Data-Aware BPMN. In: Polyvyanyy, A., Wynn, M.T., Van Looy, A., Reichert, M. (eds) Business Process Management. BPM 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12875. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85469-0_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85469-0_13

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