Abstract
Advantages and shortcomings of different process modeling languages are heavily debated, both in academia and industry, but little evidence is presented to support judgements. With this paper we aim to contribute to a more rigorous, theoretical discussion of the topic by drawing a link to well-established research on program comprehension. In particular, we focus on imperative and declarative techniques of modeling a process. Cognitive research has demonstrated that imperative programs deliver sequential information much better while declarative programs offer clear insight into circumstantial information. In this paper we show that in principle this argument can be transferred to respective features of process modeling languages. Our contribution is a pair of propositions that are routed in the cognitive dimensions framework. In future research, we aim to challenge these propositions by an experiment.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Reisig, W., Rozenberg, G. (eds.): APN 1998. LNCS, vol. 1491. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)
Recker, J., Dreiling, A.: Does it matter which process modelling language we teach or use? an experimental study on understanding process modelling languages without formal education. In: Toleman, M., Cater-Steel, A., Roberts, D. (eds.) 18th Australasian Conference on Information Systems, pp. 356–366 (2007)
Mendling, J., Reijers, H., Cardoso, J.: What makes process models understandable? In: Alonso, G., Dadam, P., Rosemann, M. (eds.) BPM 2007. LNCS, vol. 4714, pp. 48–63. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Gilmore, D.J., Green, T.R.G.: Comprehension and recall of miniature programs. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 21(1), 31–48 (1984)
Nigam, A., Caswell, N.: Business artifacts: An approach to operational specification. IBM Systems Journal 42(3), 428–445 (2004)
Owen, M., Raj, J.: BPMN and Business Process Management: Introduction to the New Business Process Modeling Standard. Technical report, Popkin (2003), http://whitepaper.techweb.com/cmptechweb/search/viewabstract/71
Smith, H., Fingar, P.: Business Process Management: The Third Wave (2003)
Pesic, M.: Constraint-Based Workflow Management Systems: Shifting Control to Users. PhD thesis, Eindhoven University of Technology (2008)
Boley, H.: Declarative and Procedural Paradigms - Do They Really Compete? In: Boley, H., Richter, M.M. (eds.) PDK 1991. LNCS, vol. 567, pp. 383–385. Springer, Heidelberg (1991)
Korhonen, J.: Evolution of agile enterprise architecture (April 2006), http://blog.jannekorhonen.fi/?p=11 (retrieved February 10, 2009)
Goldberg, L.: Seven deadly sins of business rules (September 2007), http://www.bpminstitute.org/articles/article/article/seven-deadly-sins.html (retrieved February 10, 2009)
McGregor, M.: Procedure vs. process (January 2009), http://www.it-director.com/blogs/Mark_McGregor/2009/1/procedure_vs_process.html (retrieved February 10, 2009)
Vanderfeesten, I., Reijers, H., van der Aalst, W.: Evaluating workflow process designs using cohesion and coupling metrics. Comp. in Ind. 59(5) (2008)
Guceglioglu, A., Demirors, O.: Using Software Quality Characteristics to Measure Business Process Quality. In: van der Aalst, W.M.P., Benatallah, B., Casati, F., Curbera, F. (eds.) BPM 2005. LNCS, vol. 3649, pp. 374–379. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Felleisen, M.: On the Expressive Power of Programming Languages. Science of Computer Programming 17(1-3), 35–75 (1991)
Prechelt, L.: An Empirical Comparison of Seven Programming Languages. Computer, 23–29 (2000)
Dijkstra, E.: Letters to the editor: go to statement considered harmful. Communications of the ACM 11(3), 147–148 (1968)
Glinert, E.: Nontextual programming environments. In: Visual Programming Systems, pp. 144–230. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1990)
Wiedenbeck, S., Ramalingam, V., Sarasamma, S., Corritore, C.: A comparison of the comprehension of object-oriented and procedural programs by novice programmers. Interacting with Computers 11(3), 255–282 (1999)
Meyer, R.: Comprehension as affected by the structure of the problem representation. Memory & Cognition 4(3), 249–255 (1976)
Shneiderman, B., Mayer, R.: Syntactic/semantic interactions in programmer behavior: A model and experimental results. International Journal of Parallel Programming 8(3), 219–238 (1979)
Fodor, J., Bever, T., Garrett, M.: The Psychology of Language: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics and Generative Grammar. McGraw-Hill Companies, New York (1974)
McKeithen, K., Reitman, J., Rueter, H., Hirtle, S.: Knowledge organization and skill differences in computer programmers. Cogn. Psych. 13(3), 307–325 (1981)
Adelson, B.: Problem solving and the development of abstract categories in programming languages. Memory & Cognition 9(4), 422–433 (1981)
Green, T.: Conditional program statements and their comprehensibility to professional programmers. Journal of Occupational Psychology 50, 93–109 (1977)
Green, T.: Ifs and thens: Is nesting just for the birds? Software Focus 10(5) (1980)
Gilmore, D., Green, T.: Comprehension and recall of miniature programs. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 21(1), 31–48 (1984)
Green, T.: Cognitive dimensions of notations. In: Sutcliffe, A., Macaulay, L. (eds.) People and Computers V, Proceedings, pp. 443–460 (1989)
Green, T., Petre, M.: Usability Analysis of Visual Programming Environments: A Cognitive Dimensions Framework. J. Vis. Lang. Computing 7(2), 131–174 (1996)
Blackwell, A.: Ten years of cognitive dimensions in visual languages and computing. J. Vis. Lang. Computing 17(4), 285–287 (2006)
Vanderfeesten, I., Reijers, H., Mendling, J., Aalst, W., Cardoso, J.: On a Quest for Good Process Models: The Cross-Connectivity Metric. In: Bellahsène, Z., Léonard, M. (eds.) CAiSE 2008. LNCS, vol. 5074, pp. 480–494. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Lloyd, J.: Practical advantages of declarative programming. In: Joint Conference on Declarative Programming, GULP-PRODE 1994 (1994)
Kowalski, R.: Algorithm = logic + control. Commun. ACM 22(7), 424–436 (1979)
Roy, P.V., Haridi, S.: Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming. MIT Press, Cambridge (2004)
Petri, C.A.: Concepts of net theory. In: Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science: Proc. of Symposium and Summer School, High Tatras, September 3-8, pp. 137–146. Math. Inst. of the Slovak Acad. of Sciences (1973)
Holt, A.W.: A Mathematical Model of Continuous Discrete Behavior. Massachusettes Computer Associates, Inc. (November 1980)
van der Aalst, W.M.P., Pesic, M.: DecSerFlow: Towards a truly declarative service flow language. In: Bravetti, M., Núñez, M., Zavattaro, G. (eds.) WS-FM 2006. LNCS, vol. 4184, pp. 1–23. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Courcoubetis, C., Vardi, M.Y., Wolper, P., Yannakakis, M.: Memory-efficient algorithms for the verification of temporal properties. Formal Methods in System Design 1(2/3), 275–288 (1992)
Jensen, K.: Coloured Petri Nets. Springer, Heidelberg (1992)
Damm, W., Harel, D.: LSCs: Breathing life into message sequence charts. Form. Methods Syst. Des. 19(1), 45–80 (2001)
Sadiq, S., Sadiq, W., Orlowska, M.: A Framework for Constraint Specification and Validation in Flexible Workflows. Information Systems 30(5), 349–378 (2005)
Lamport, L.: The temporal logic of actions. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 16(3), 872–923 (1994)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Fahland, D. et al. (2009). Declarative versus Imperative Process Modeling Languages: The Issue of Understandability. In: Halpin, T., et al. Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling. BPMDS EMMSAD 2009 2009. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 29. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01862-6_29
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01862-6_29
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-01861-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-01862-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)