Abstract
Petri nets efficiently model both data- and control-flow. Control-flow is either modeled explicitly as flow of a specific kind of data, or implicit based on the data-flow. Explicit modeling of control-flow is useful for well-known and highly structured processes, but may make modeling of abstract features of models, or processes which are highly dynamic, overly complex. Declarative modeling, such as is supported by Declare and DCR graphs, focus on control-flow, but does not specify it explicitly; instead specifications come in the form of constraints on the order or appearance of tasks. In this paper we propose a combination of the two, using colored Petri nets instead of plain Petri nets to provide full data support. The combined approach makes it possible to add a focus on data to declarative languages, and to remove focus from the explicit control-flow from Petri nets for dynamic or abstract processes. In addition to enriching both procedural processes in the form of Petri nets and declarative processes, we also support a flow from modeling only abstract data- and control-flow of a model towards a more explicit control-flow model if so desired. We define our combined approach, and provide considerations necessary for enactment. Our approach has been implemented in CPN Tools 4.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Process Mining: Discovery, Conformance and Enhancement of Business Processes. Springer (2011)
van der Aalst, W.M.P., Barthelmess, P., Ellis, C.A., Wainer, J.: Workflow Modeling using Proclets. In: CoopIS 2000. LNCS, pp. 198–209. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Bhattacharya, K., Gerede, C., Hull, R., Liu, R., Su, J.: Towards formal analysis of artifact-centric business process models. In: Alonso, G., Dadam, P., Rosemann, M. (eds.) BPM 2007. LNCS, vol. 4714, pp. 288–304. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Carmona, J.A., Cortadella, J., Kishinevsky, M.: A Region-Based Algorithm for Discovering Petri Nets from Event Logs. In: Dumas, M., Reichert, M., Shan, M.-C. (eds.) BPM 2008. LNCS, vol. 5240, pp. 358–373. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
CPN Tools webpage, http://cpntools.org
Fahland, D.: Towards analyzing declarative workflows. In: Autonomous and Adaptive Web Services. Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings, vol. 07061, p. 6. Internationales Begegnungs- und Forschungszentrum fuer Informatik, IBFI (2007)
Hildebrandt, T., Mukkamala, R.R.: Declarative event-based workflow as distributed dynamic condition response graphs. In: Post-Proc. of PLACES 2010 (2010)
Hull, R., Damaggio, E., Fournier, F., Gupta, M., Terry, H.,I.F., Stacy, H., Mark, L., Sridhar, M., Anil, N., Piyawadee, S., Roman, V.: Introducing the guard-stage-milestone approach for specifying business entity lifecycles. In: Proc. of WS-FM 2010, pp. 1–24. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Jensen, K., Kristensen, L.: Coloured Petri Nets – Modelling and Validation of Concurrent Systems. Springer (2009)
Kristensen, L.M., Westergaard, M.: Automatic Structure-Based Code Generation from Coloured Petri Nets: A Proof of Concept. In: Kowalewski, S., Roveri, M. (eds.) FMICS 2010. LNCS, vol. 6371, pp. 215–230. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Maggi, F.M., Westergaard, M., Montali, M., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Runtime Verification of LTL-Based Declarative Process Models. In: Khurshid, S., Sen, K. (eds.) RV 2011. LNCS, vol. 7186, pp. 131–146. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)
Maggi, F.M., Montali, M., Westergaard, M., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Monitoring Business Constraints with Linear Temporal Logic: An Approach Based on Colored Automata. In: Rinderle-Ma, S., Toumani, F., Wolf, K. (eds.) BPM 2011. LNCS, vol. 6896, pp. 132–147. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Mukkamala, R.R.: A Formal Model For Declarative Workflows - Dynamic Condition Response Graphs. Ph.D. thesis, IT University of Copenhagen (March 2012)
Mulyar, N., Pesic, M., van der Aalst, W.M.P., Peleg, M.: Declarative and procedural approaches for modelling clinical guidelines: Addressing flexibility issues. In: ter Hofstede, A.H.M., Benatallah, B., Paik, H.-Y. (eds.) BPM 2007 Workshops. LNCS, vol. 4928, pp. 335–346. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Pesic, M.: Constraint-Based Workflow Management Systems: Shifting Controls to Users. Ph.D. thesis, Beta Research School for Operations Management and Logistics, Eindhoven (2008)
Pichler, P., Weber, B., Zugal, S., Pinggera, J., Mendling, J., Reijers, H.A.: Imperative versus declarative process modeling languages: An empirical investigation. In: Proc. of ER-BPM 2011, pp. 383–394 (2011)
Westergaard, M.: CPN Tools 4: Multi-formalism and Extensibility. In: Colom, J.-M., Desel, J. (eds.) PETRI NETS 2013. LNCS, vol. 7927, pp. 400–409. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Westergaard, M.: Better Algorithms for Analyzing and Enacting Declarative Workflow Languages Using LTL. In: Rinderle-Ma, S., Toumani, F., Wolf, K. (eds.) BPM 2011. LNCS, vol. 6896, pp. 83–98. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Westergaard, M., Maggi, F.: Declare: A Tool Suite for Declarative Workflow Modeling and Enactment. In: Business Process Management Demonstration Track (BPMDemos 2011). CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 820, CEUR-WS.org (2011)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Westergaard, M., Slaats, T. (2013). Mixing Paradigms for More Comprehensible Models. In: Daniel, F., Wang, J., Weber, B. (eds) Business Process Management. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8094. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40176-3_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40176-3_24
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40175-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40176-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)