Enhancing Formal Specification and Verification of Temporal Constraints in Business Processes

Abstract

Formal specification and verification support of time-related constraints constitute fundamental challenges for any Business Process Management (BPM) system. Reluctantly, the literature on the subject of formal specification and verification of advanced temporal constraints such as absolute temporal constraints associated with relative temporal constraints is scarce. In this paper, we propose a novel approach enabling the formal specification and verification of advanced temporal constraints of business processes. The particularity of our approach is that it caters for relative and absolute related temporal constraints while relying on the dependencies that can exist between theses constraints. In fact, it is important to deal with such dependencies to handle the violations that can arise as soon as possible at design step. To do so, we propose a formal approach which relies on the timed automata formalism. In this context, we propose a set of mapping rules and algorithms where the semantic of timed automata is preserved even if we deal with absolute and relative temporal constraints. Using the defined formal model, we investigate a model checking based verification process that aims at validating business processes against their absolute and relative temporal constraints.

A metamodel to integrate business processes time perspective in BPMN 2.0

“…Some others prefer Timed Automata, such as Watahiki et al [35] or Cheikhrouhou et al [6,7] . Another subgroup utilize different techniques, for instance, Du et al [10] with Time Workflow Nets, Kazhamiakin et al [21] with Web Service Timed State Transition Systems, Kallel et al [20] with XTUS-Automata, Wong and Gibbons [37] with Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) and Eder and Tahamtan [12,13] with timed activity graphs.…”

“…Finally, there is a subgroup that trust BPMN as a pillar for time extensions, such as Cheikhrouhou et al [8] , Flores and Sepúlveda [15] , Gagné and Trudel [16][17][18] and Watahiki et al [35] . (ii) Some of the latter, who verify time constraints in processes, use UPPAAL integrated tool environment for carrying out validation and verification of real-time systems modeled as timed automata networks, extended with data types (bounded integers and arrays, among others), such as Watahiki et al [35] , Du et al [10] and Cheikhrouhou et al [6,7] . Another subgroup of authors choose algorithms, like Eder and Tahamtan [12,13] , and finally, some other authors like Huai et al [19] , Kazhamiakin et al [21] , Makni et al [23,24] We will focus on time dimension specification on BPMN, so we will discuss the following authors' proposals.…”

“…(I) The first group is related to distinct languages or techniques, so that: (a) Time Petri Nets, with works by Huai et al [19] and Makni et al [23,24] ; (b, i) Timed Automata, used by Cheikhrouhou et al [6,7] and Watahiki et al [35] ; (c) Timed Workflow Nets, used by Du et al [10] ; (d) Web Service Timed State Transition Systems, with the work by Kazhamiakin et al [21] ; (e) XTUS-Automata, with Kallel et al [20] reference; (f) Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP), used by Wong and Gibbons [37] ; (g) Timed Activity Graphs, with works by Eder and Tahamtan [12,13] ; and finally (h) the work by Lanz et al [61] , which proposes a set of time-patterns for process-aware information systems (PAIS) [33,41] . (II) The second group of works takes BPMN as a basis for time specification, so: (j) Flores and Sepúlveda [15] work with BPMN artifacts patterns; (k) Gagné and Trudel, in Time-BPMN [18] , propose new decorators; and finally (l), Cheikhrouhou et al [8] also use decorators for time and resource dimension of processes.…”

“…Researchers have defined business process time dimension with different approaches, such as Timed Automata [6,7,35] , Time Petri Nets [19,23,24] , Time workflow nets [10] , Timed activity graphs [12,13] , BPMN [8,[15][16][17][18]35] and other different techniques [20,21,37] .…”

Toward a Verification of Time-Centric Business Process Models

“…Our approach includes the mapping of BPMN tasks, events (start and end events), and gateways (exclusive, inclusive and parallel) into timed automata. The proposed mapping originates from the authors' previous work [11].…”