Abstract. Business process models can be compared, for example, to determine their consistency. Any comparison between process models relies on a mapping that identifies which activity in one model corresponds to which activity in another. Tools that generate such mappings are called matchers. This paper presents the ICoP framework, which can be used to develop such matchers. It consists of an architecture and re-usable matcher components. The framework enables the creation of matchers from the reusable components and, if desired, newly developed components. It focuses on matchers that also detect complex correspondences between groups of activities, where existing matchers focus on 1:1 correspondences. We evaluate the framework by applying it to find matches in process models from practice. We show that the framework can be used to develop matchers in a flexible and adaptable manner and that the resulting matchers can identify a significant number of complex correspondences. 1

Abstract. Although the business process community has put a major emphasis on patterns, notably the famous workflow patterns, only limited support for using patterns in today’s business process modeling tools can be found. While the basic workflow patterns for control flow are available in almost every business process modeling tool, there is no support for the user in correctly applying these simple patterns leading to many incorrectly modeled business processes. Only limited support for pattern compounds can be found in some tools, there is no active support for selecting patterns that are applicable in some user-determined context, tools do not give feedback to the user if applying a pattern can lead to a modeling error, nor do they trace the sequence of applied patterns during the editing process. In this paper, we describe an extension of a business process modeling tool with patterns to provide these capabilities. We distinguish three scenarios of pattern application and discuss a set of pattern compounds that are based on the basic workflow patterns for control flow. We present an approach where business users receive help in understanding the context and consequences of applying a pattern. 1

Identification of behavioural contradictions is an important aspect of software engineering, in particular for checking the consistency between a business process model used as system specification and a corresponding workflow model used as implementation. In this paper, we propose causal behavioural profiles as the basis for a consistency notion, which capture essential behavioural information, such as order, exclusiveness, and causality between pairs of activities. Existing notions of behavioural equivalence, such as bisimulation and trace equivalence, might also be applied as consistency notions. Still, they are exponential in computation. Our novel concept of causal behavioural profiles provides a weaker behavioural consistency notion that can be computed efficiently using structural decomposition techniques for sound free-choice workflow systems if unstructured net fragments are acyclic or can be traced back to S- or T-nets.

Both Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) are unique architectural styles widely used in today's industries. Mostly however, they exist as isolated systems that could greatly benefit from each other when being combined. This paper introduces SOEDA, an approach that unifies EDA and SOA by introducing a step-based development method taking advantage of the unique properties of each architecture. Individual steps reach from abstract process specification over event and process implementation to the the final execution phase -- described in a abstract manner and by means of an example. Resulting applications are based on state-of-the-art workflow technology using events to trigger execution of individual business activities.

Abstract. Quality evaluation is a challenging task in monolithic software systems, and is even more complex when it comes to Service-Oriented Software Product Lines (SOSPL), as it needs to analyze the attributes of a family of SOA systems. In SOSPL, variability can be managed and planned at the architectural level to develop a software product with the same set of functionalities but different degrees of non-functional quality attribute satisfaction. Therefore, architectural quality evaluation becomes crucial due to the fact that it allows for the examination of whether or not the final product satisfies and guarantees all the ranges of quality requirements within the envisioned scope. This paper addresses the open research problem of aggregating QoS attribute ranges with respect to architectural variability. Previous solutions for quality aggregation do not consider architectural variability for composite services. Our approach introduces variability patterns that can possibly occur at the architectural level of a SOSPL. We propose an aggregation model for QoS computation which takes both variability and composition patterns into account. 1

Abstract. We report on a case study on control-flow analysis of business process models. We checked 735 industrial business process models from financial services, telecommunications and other domains. We investigated these models for soundness (absence of deadlock and lack of synchronization) using three different approaches: the business process verification tool Woflan, the Petri net model checker LoLA, and a recently developed technique based on SESE decomposition. We evaluate the various techniques used by these approaches in terms of their ability of accelerating the check. Our results show that industrial business process models can be checked in a few milliseconds, which enables tight integration of modeling with control-flow analysis. We also briefly compare the diagnostic information delivered by the different approaches. 1

Abstract: Real world business process models may consist of hundreds of elements and have sophisticated structure. Although there are tasks where such models are valuable and appreciated, in general complexity has anegative influence on model comprehension and analysis. Thus, means for managing the complexity of process models are needed. One approach is abstraction of business process models—creation of aprocess model which preserves the main features of the initial elaborate process model, but leavesout insignificant details. In this paper we study the structural aspects of process model abstraction and introduce an abstraction approach based on process structure trees (PST). The developed approach assures that the abstracted process model preserves the ordering constraints of the initial model. It surpasses pattern-based process model abstraction approaches, allowing to handle graph-structured process models of arbitrary structure. We also provide an evaluation of the proposed approach. 1

The notion of event-driven process chains (EPC) is widely used to model processes. It is an ongoing discussion of how to reach executable workflows from EPCs. While the transformation of the general structure and the functions is well-understood, the transformation of events is an open issue. This paper discusses dierent possible event types and their semantics. Furthermore, it presents a transformation of the introduced event types to workflow constructs respecting the semantics of each event.

Abstract. The IBM Pattern-based Process Model Accelerators add a set of patterns, transformations, refactoring operations, and a control-flow analysis feature to IBM WebSphere Business Modeler that make it easy for users to apply common best practices when modeling business processes. As a result, users create and edit higher-quality process models and they benefit from the automation of tedious editing tasks resulting in productivity gains and a more enjoyable user experience. This demo targets participants with interest on faster process modeling approaches leading to higher-quality process models. 1

Abstract. Enterprise-wide process harmonisation initiatives require the analysis of commonalities of existing business process models. That is, correspondences between activities are identified, such that the behavioural equivalence of the models can be assessed thereafter. Due to refinements, these correspondences can relate sets of activities to each other, i.e., there are complex 1:n or n:m correspondences. In this paper, we discuss how notions of behaviour inheritance can be applied in this context. In addition, we elaborate on how structural information can be leveraged to identify violations of behaviour inheritance. 1