UMLPACE for Modeling and Verification of Complex Business Requirements in Event-Driven Process Chain (EPC)

Business processes (BPs) are often modeled to elaborate process-related business requirements (BRs). This leads to verify the complex BRs in early automation stages. Among various BP languages, event-driven process chain (EPC) is a well-known semi-formal modeling language, which is verifiable after transforming it into any other formal language, such as, timed automata or Petri nets. However, full potential of EPC cannot be exploited as yet because existing EPC tools can only model or verify the simple patterns and they lack the modeling/verification of complex patterns. Moreover, only the proprietary tools are available, which limit its applicability toward overwhelming utilization amongst widespread practitioners and research community. This research work is the first attempt to make EPC more expressive in terms of modeling complex patterns for real time systems. Particularly, the UMLPACE (Unified Modeling Language Profile for Atomic and Complex events in EPC) has been developed, which adapts the concepts of UML activity diagram for representing both simple as well as complex patterns in EPC. As a part of research, a complete open source transformation engine is developed to transform UMLPACE source models into timed automata target models for the verification of complex BPs. The implementation of transformation engine is carried out in JAVA language and Acceleo tool through model-to-text transformation approach. Finally, the broader applications of UMLPACE are demonstrated through two benchmark case studies.

[1]  Jan Mendling,et al.  Yet Another Event-Driven Process Chain , 2005, Business Process Management.

[2]  Remco M. Dijkman,et al.  Semantics and analysis of business process models in BPMN , 2008, Inf. Softw. Technol..

[3]  Jun Han,et al.  EPClets - A Lightweight and Flexible Textual Language to Augment EPC Process Modelling , 2014, 2014 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing.

[4]  Jan Mendling,et al.  Detection and prediction of errors in EPCs of the SAP reference model , 2008, Data Knowl. Eng..

[5]  Marc Born,et al.  Towards executable models: transforming EDOC behavior models to CORBA and BPEL , 2004, Proceedings. Eighth IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference, 2004. EDOC 2004..

[6]  Hajo A. Reijers,et al.  A Systematic Evaluation of Enterprise Modelling Approaches on Their Applicability to Automatically Generate ERP Software , 2016, 2016 IEEE 18th Conference on Business Informatics (CBI).

[7]  Patricia Bouyer,et al.  Extended Timed Automata and Time Petri Nets , 2006, Sixth International Conference on Application of Concurrency to System Design (ACSD'06).

[8]  Peter Loos,et al.  Towards an Extended Metamodel of Event-Driven Process Chains to Model Complex Event Patterns , 2015, ER Workshops.

[9]  Marjan Hericko,et al.  An empirical investigation of intuitive understandability of process diagrams , 2016, Comput. Stand. Interfaces.

[10]  Andreas Winter,et al.  Using GXL for exchanging business process models , 2006, Inf. Syst. E Bus. Manag..

[11]  Robert B. France,et al.  Model-driven development using UML 2.0: promises and pitfalls , 2006, Computer.

[12]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Formalization and verification of event-driven process chains , 1999, Inf. Softw. Technol..

[13]  Farooque Azam,et al.  Verification of Event-Driven Process Chain with Timed Automata and Time Petri Nets , 2017, 2017 9th IEEE-GCC Conference and Exhibition (GCCCE).

[14]  Olivier H. Roux,et al.  Structural translation from Time Petri Nets to Timed Automata , 2005, J. Syst. Softw..

[15]  Jörg Dörr,et al.  EPC vs. UML Activity Diagram - Two Experiments Examining their Usefulness for Requirements Engineering , 2009, 2009 17th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference.

[16]  Roland Rieke,et al.  Predictive Security Analysis for Event-Driven Processes , 2010, MMM-ACNS.

[17]  Edward A. Lee.  Constructive Models of Discrete and Continuous Physical Phenomena , 2014, IEEE Access.

[18]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  A configurable reference modelling language , 2007, Inf. Syst..

[19]  Farooque Azam,et al.  Event-Driven Process Chain for Modeling and Verification of Business Requirements–A Systematic Literature Review , 2018, IEEE Access.

[20]  Bruno Vallespir,et al.  Enabling model checking for collaborative process analysis: from BPMN to ‘Network of Timed Automata’ , 2015, Enterp. Inf. Syst..

[21]  Jan Mendling,et al.  Generating correct EPCs from configured C-EPCs , 2006, SAC '06.

[22]  Hafedh Mili,et al.  Business process modeling languages: Sorting through the alphabet soup , 2010, CSUR.

[23]  Boudewijn F. van Dongen,et al.  ProM 4.0: Comprehensive Support for Real Process Analysis , 2007, ICATPN.

[24]  Jan Mendling,et al.  Preserving correctness during business process model configuration , 2010, Formal Aspects of Computing.

[25]  Samia Oussena,et al.  A Case Study on Modeling of Complex Event Processing in Enterprise Architecture , 2012, ICEIS.

[26]  Jan Mendling,et al.  EPC markup language (EPML): an XML-based interchange format for event-driven process chains (EPC) , 2006, Inf. Syst. E Bus. Manag..

[27]  Junliang Chen,et al.  lightEPC: A Formal Approach for Modeling Personalized Lightweight Event-Driven Business Process , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing.

[28]  Wil M.P. van der Aalst,et al.  Getting rid of OR-joins and multiple start events in business process models , 2008, Enterp. Inf. Syst..

[29]  Beate List,et al.  A UML 2 Profile for Event Driven Process Chains , 2006, CONFENIS.

[30]  Stefan Denne,et al.  Verifying Properties of (Timed) Event Driven Process Chains by Transformation to Hybrid Automata , 2006, EPK.

[31]  Iris Reinhartz-Berger,et al.  Extending the Adaptability of Reference Models , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans.

[32]  Muhammad Kashif,et al.  Model-based design verification for embedded systems through SVOCL: an OCL extension for SystemVerilog , 2017, Des. Autom. Embed. Syst..

[33]  Veronika Stefanov,et al.  A performance measurement perspective for event-driven process chains , 2005, 16th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA'05).

[34]  Ekkart Kindler,et al.  On the semantics of EPCs: Resolving the vicious circle , 2006, Data Knowl. Eng..

[35]  Hongming Cai,et al.  Multi-view service-oriented rule merged business process modeling framework , 2011, Proceedings of 2011 IEEE 6th International Symposium on Service Oriented System (SOSE).

[36]  Tom Mens,et al.  A Taxonomy of Model Transformation , 2006, GRaMoT@GPCE.

[37]  Volker Gruhn,et al.  A Comparison of Soundness Results Obtained by Different Approaches , 2009, Business Process Management Workshops.

[38]  Eva Söderström,et al.  Towards a Framework for Comparing Process Modelling Languages , 2002, CAiSE.

[39]  Walid Gaaloul,et al.  A semantic framework for configurable business process as a service in the cloud , 2016, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[40]  Sébastien Gérard,et al.  MARTE: Also an UML Profile for Modeling AADL Applications , 2007, 12th IEEE International Conference on Engineering Complex Computer Systems (ICECCS 2007).