A structural/temporal query language for Business Processes

A Business Process consists of multiple business activities, which, when combined in a flow, achieve some particular goal. These processes usually operate in a distributed environment and the software implementing them is fairly complex. Thus, effective tools for analysis of the possible executions of such processes are extremely important for companies (Beeri et al., 2006, 2007 [4,5]); (Deutch and Milo, 2008 [13]); these tools can allow to debug and optimize the processes, and to make an optimal use of them. The goal of the present paper is to consider a formal model underlying Business Processes and study query languages over such processes. We study in details the relationship of the proposed model with previously suggested formalisms for processes modeling and querying. In particular we propose a query evaluation algorithm of polynomial data complexity that can be applied uniformly to two kind of common queries over processes, namely queries on the structure of the process specification as well as temporal queries on the potential behavior of the defined process. We show that unless P=NP the efficiency of our algorithm is asymptotically optimal.

[1]  Jesse B. Wright,et al.  Algebraic Automata and Context-Free Sets , 1967, Inf. Control..

[2]  Catriel Beeri,et al.  Querying Business Processes with BP-QL , 2005, VLDB.

[3]  Grzegorz Rozenberg,et al.  Graph grammars with node-label controlled rewriting and embedding , 1982, Graph-Grammars and Their Application to Computer Science.

[4]  Daniel Deutch,et al.  Type inference and type checking for queries on execution traces , 2008, Proc. VLDB Endow..

[5]  Catriel Beeri,et al.  Monitoring Business Processes with Queries , 2007, VLDB.

[6]  Michael R. Fellows,et al.  Fixed-Parameter Tractability and Completeness II: On Completeness for W[1] , 1995, Theor. Comput. Sci..

[7]  Daniel Deutch,et al.  Querying Structural and Behavioral Properties of Business Processes , 2007, DBPL.

[8]  Bruno Courcelle,et al.  The Monadic Second-Order Logic of Graphs. I. Recognizable Sets of Finite Graphs , 1990, Inf. Comput..

[9]  Martin Grohe,et al.  The complexity of first-order and monadic second-order logic revisited , 2002, Proceedings 17th Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science.

[10]  E. Allen Emerson,et al.  Temporal and Modal Logic , 1991, Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, Volume B: Formal Models and Sematics.

[11]  Mihalis Yannakakis,et al.  On the complexity of database queries (extended abstract) , 1997, PODS.

[12]  Bruno Courcelle,et al.  The monadic second-order logic of graphs XVI : Canonical graph decompositions , 2005, Log. Methods Comput. Sci..

[13]  Rajeev Alur,et al.  Analysis of recursive state machines , 2001, TOPL.

[14]  A. Mostowski.  Review: B. A. Trahtenbrot, Impossibility of an Algorithm for the Decision Problem in Finite Classes , 1950, Journal of Symbolic Logic.

[15]  J. Van Leeuwen,et al.  Handbook of theoretical computer science - Part A: Algorithms and complexity; Part B: Formal models and semantics , 1990 .

[16]  Jan van Leeuwen,et al.  Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, Vol. B: Formal Models and Semantics , 1994 .

[17]  Catriel Beeri,et al.  Querying business processes , 2006, VLDB.

[18]  Peter Buneman,et al.  Semistructured data , 1997, PODS.

[19]  David S. Johnson,et al.  Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness , 1978 .

[20]  Georg Gottlob,et al.  XPath processing in a nutshell , 2003, SGMD.

[21]  Greg Nelson,et al.  Simplification by Cooperating Decision Procedures , 1979, TOPL.

[22]  Alin Deutsch,et al.  Verification of communicating data-driven web services , 2006, PODS '06.

[23]  Michael R. Fellows,et al.  Parameterized Complexity , 1998 .

[24]  Benjamin Livshits,et al.  Context-sensitive program analysis as database queries , 2005, PODS.

[25]  Swarat Chaudhuri,et al.  A fixpoint calculus for local and global program flows , 2006, POPL '06.

[26]  Bruno Courcelle.  Recognizable Sets of Graphs, Hypergraphs and Relational Structures: A Survey , 2004, Developments in Language Theory.

[27]  Wenfei Fan,et al.  Using partial evaluation in distributed query evaluation , 2006, VLDB.

[28]  室 章治郎.  Michael R.Garey/David S.Johnson 著, "COMPUTERS AND INTRACTABILITY A guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness", FREEMAN, A5判変形判, 338+xii, \5,217, 1979 , 1980 .

[29]  Matjaz B. Juric,et al.  Business process execution language for web services , 2004 .

[30]  Igor Walukiewicz,et al.  On the Expressive Completeness of the Propositional mu-Calculus with Respect to Monadic Second Order Logic , 1996, CONCUR.

[31]  Theodosios Pavlidis,et al.  Linear and Context-Free Graph Grammars , 1972, JACM.

[32]  Thomas Lengauer,et al.  Efficient decision procedures for graph properties on context-free graph languages , 1993, JACM.

[33]  Andy Schürr.  Logic Based Programmed Structure Rewriting Systems , 1996, Fundam. Informaticae.

[34]  Michael Benedikt,et al.  Model Checking of Unrestricted Hierarchical State Machines , 2001, ICALP.

[35]  Stephan Merz,et al.  Model Checking , 2000 .

[36]  Agostino Dovier,et al.  The Subgraph Bisimulation Problem , 2003, IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng..

[37]  Eitan M. Gurari,et al.  Introduction to the theory of computation , 1989 .

[38]  Daniel Deutch,et al.  Evaluating TOP-K Queries over Business Processes , 2009, 2009 IEEE 25th International Conference on Data Engineering.