Control-Flow-Based Querying of Process Executions from Partially Ordered Event Data

Abstract

Event logs, as viewed in process mining, contain event data describing the execution of operational processes. Most process mining techniques take an event log as input and generate insights about the underlying process by analyzing the data provided. Consequently, handling large volumes of event data is essential to apply process mining successfully. Traditionally, individual process executions are considered sequentially ordered process activities. However, process executions are increasingly viewed as partially ordered activities to more accurately reflect process behavior observed in reality, such as simultaneous execution of activities. Process executions comprising partially ordered activities may contain more complex activity patterns than sequence-based process executions. This paper presents a novel query language to call up process executions from event logs containing partially ordered activities. The query language allows users to specify complex ordering relations over activities, i.e., control flow constraints. Evaluating a query for a given log returns process executions satisfying the specified constraints. We demonstrate the implementation of the query language in a process mining tool and evaluate its performance on real-life event logs.

Analyzing Healthcare Processes with Incremental Process Discovery: Practical Insights from a Real-World Application

“…Sect. 3.2) and variant querying [52] supported the research team in this phase, along with variant filtering and editing based on domain knowledge. For example, consider the variant sequentialization feature introduced in Sect.…”

“…In the lower part of the screenshot, the variant explorer is visible. To handle vast amounts of variants, a query language [52] allows targeting variants to be found using specified activity patterns. In addition, Cortado features frequent pattern mining techniques for variants and variant clustering algorithms.…”

“…By using the query language [52] implemented in Cortado, we initially explored in detail the numerous variants in the event log to investigate their main characteristics and remove any outliers that could not be detected in the previous step, i.e., the Event Data Extraction and Initial Preparation phase. It should be noted that in this stage, outliers are not anomalies within the process or infrequent behaviors; rather, they manifest as truncated or incomplete traces resulting from errors in data entry or extraction.…”