Correctness ensuring process configuration: an approach based on partner synthesis

  • Authors:

  • Wil van der Aalst;Niels Lohmann;Marcello La Rosa;Jingxin Xu

  • Affiliations:

  • Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands and Queensland University of Technology, Australia;Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands and Universität Rostock, Germany;Queensland University of Technology, Australia;Queensland University of Technology, Australia

  • Venue:
  • BPM'10 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Business process management
  • Year:
  • 2010

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

A configurable process model describes a family of similar process models in a given domain. Such a model can be configured to obtain a specific process model that is subsequently used to handle individual cases, for instance, to process customer orders. Process configuration is notoriously difficult as there may be all kinds of interdependencies between configuration decisions. In fact, an incorrect configuration may lead to behavioral issues such as deadlocks and livelocks. To address this problem, we present a novel verification approach inspired by the "operating guidelines" used for partner synthesis. We view the configuration process as an external service, and compute a characterization of all such services which meet particular requirements using the notion of configuration guideline. As a result, we can characterize all feasible configurations (i. e., configurations without behavioral problems) at design time, instead of repeatedly checking each individual configuration while configuring a process model.