A First Step towards a Compiler for Business Processes

Abstract

The verification of business processes is crucial since an erroneous execution causes high costs and damages the reputation of the providing company. The first step towards correct business processes is the verification of structural correctness, i.e., the absence of deadlocks and lack of synchronization. In this demonstration paper, we present a system which was integrated into the Activiti BPMN 2.0 designer for Eclipse, allowing an immediate user support during the development of business processes. Therefore, an entire business process is transformed into semantically equivalent workflow graphs on which a new structural correctness verification is performed directly. This is done for each modification and the determined failures are visualized directly in the business process. The system can be seen as first step towards a compiler for business processes.

A Complete and the Most Liberal Semantics for Converging OR Gateways in Sound Processes

“…Our next step in future work will be to develop a first approach for detecting all deadlocks and states with lack of synchronization within processes containing OR-joins. Hence, we have to extend previous work, e.g., Vanhatalo et al [14], [16], Fahland et al [17], and our previous work for process analyses and execution [13], [18], [19], [20].…”

Control-Flow-Based Methods to Support the Development of Sound Workflows

“…Our first complete semantics might be helpful [67]. Another research topic is the overall system for the development, storage, and execution of workflows [61]. So far Mojo only accepts the structure of workflows without data information.…”

“…So far Mojo only accepts the structure of workflows without data information. As mentioned in earlier work [61], defining a clean intermediate representation for workflows that allows both control-flow and data-flow analyses is profitable. One possibility is the extended workflow graph [68].…”

“…We have developed a tool Mojo to evaluate the previously introduced algorithms and approaches [60]. The tool is part of our concept of a system for developing and executing workflows [61], shown in Figure 21. Currently, Mojo covers parts of the producer side.…”

“…Further information about the system and its concepts can be found in Prinz et al [61]. An overview of the compiler and the virtual machine is given by Prinz et al [62], [63].…”