Formalization of BPMN Gateways using the DD-LOTOS Formal Language
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Date
2023-11-29
Journal Title
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Publisher
Croatian Communications and Information Society in cooperation with the University of Split, FESB, Croatia
Abstract
Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), is a
standardized graphical language used for the graphical modeling
of business processes. A BPMN model is composed of several
small graphs called elements; these elements make it possible to
describe the activities, the events, and the interactions between
the components of a business process. Among the essential
elements of BPMN are gateways, which control the flow of data.
However, the big challenge of these gateways is the existence
of several interpretations of the same BPMN model containing
gateways; this is due to the informal and ambiguous definition.
Several works have proposed the formalization of gateways
using formal languages such as process algebras, Petri nets,
etc. The purpose of this article is to propose a formalization
of BPMN gateways using the formal language DD-LOTOS. DDLOTOS is defined on a semantics of true parallelism called
maximality semantics and allows to support distribution and
temporal constraints. We then propose the verification of certain
properties using the UPPAAL model checker. Our approach
has been validated through a case study representing the online
purchasing process.
Description
The BPMN notation [1] is considered the most adopted
language in modeling business processes in an organization
[2]. Through its basic graphic elements, BPMN offers an
intuitive approach to modeling complex business processes.