An Integrated Notation for Business Process Models

2014 ◽  
pp. 158-174
Author(s):  
Giorgio Bruno
Keyword(s):  
Business Processes ◽  
Data Flow ◽  
Linear Structure ◽  
Control Flow ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Hiring Process ◽  
Behavioral Requirements ◽  
Business Entities ◽  
Basic Features ◽  
Traditional Activity

Since business processes may address complex behavioral requirements resulting from the integration of several items, i.e. tasks, business entities (also called artifacts), control flow rules and data flow rules, they need notations able to accommodate several viewpoints. This chapter proposes a notation, ARTS, aimed at integrating the traditional activity-oriented viewpoint and the artifact-oriented one. The major benefits are the unification of the control flow and the data flow and a clear representation of the choices to be carried out by the participants. The basic features are illustrated with the help of three versions of a simplified hiring process. This chapter also deals with the structure of work lists, which are the major interface between the participants and their tasks. The organization of the work lists leverages the artifacts to emphasize human choices; for this reason, the traditional linear structure is replaced with a network one, which shows the artifacts along with their states, correlations and valid options.

scholarly journals A Detection Method for Abnormal Transactions in E-Commerce Based on Extended Data Flow Conformance Checking

2022 ◽  
Vol 2022 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Yadi Wang ◽  
Wangyang Yu ◽  
Peng Teng ◽  
Guanjun Liu ◽  
Dongming Xiang
Keyword(s):  
Anomaly Detection ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Data Flow ◽  
Detection Algorithm ◽  
Control Flow ◽  
Smart Devices ◽  
Integration Model ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Mobile Transaction ◽  
And Control

With the development of smart devices and mobile communication technologies, e-commerce has spread over all aspects of life. Abnormal transaction detection is important in e-commerce since abnormal transactions can result in large losses. Additionally, integrating data flow and control flow is important in the research of process modeling and data analysis since it plays an important role in the correctness and security of business processes. This paper proposes a novel method of detecting abnormal transactions via an integration model of data and control flows. Our model, called Extended Data Petri net (DPNE), integrates the data interaction and behavior of the whole process from the user logging into the e-commerce platform to the end of the payment, which also covers the mobile transaction process. We analyse the structure of the model, design the anomaly detection algorithm of relevant data, and illustrate the rationality and effectiveness of the whole system model. Through a case study, it is proved that each part of the system can respond well, and the system can judge each activity of every mobile transaction. Finally, the anomaly detection results are obtained by some comprehensive analysis.

scholarly journals Exploring location-dependency in process modeling

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 794-815 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinwei Zhu ◽  
Jan Recker ◽  
Guobin Zhu ◽  
Flávia Maria Santoro
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Modeling ◽  
Context Awareness ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Flow Patterns ◽  
Control Flow ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Location Awareness ◽  
Process Data ◽  
Content Type

Purpose – Context-awareness has emerged as an important principle in the design of flexible business processes. The goal of the research is to develop an approach to extend context-aware business process modeling toward location-awareness. The purpose of this paper is to identify and conceptualize location-dependencies in process modeling. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses a pattern-based approach to identify location-dependency in process models. The authors design specifications for these patterns. The authors present illustrative examples and evaluate the identified patterns through a literature review of published process cases. Findings – This paper introduces location-awareness as a new perspective to extend context-awareness in BPM research, by introducing relevant location concepts such as location-awareness and location-dependencies. The authors identify five basic location-dependent control-flow patterns that can be captured in process models. And the authors identify location-dependencies in several existing case studies of business processes. Research limitations/implications – The authors focus exclusively on the control-flow perspective of process models. Further work needs to extend the research to address location-dependencies in process data or resources. Further empirical work is needed to explore determinants and consequences of the modeling of location-dependencies. Originality/value – As existing literature mostly focusses on the broad context of business process, location in process modeling still is treated as “second class citizen” in theory and in practice. This paper discusses the vital role of location-dependencies within business processes. The proposed five basic location-dependent control-flow patterns are novel and useful to explain location-dependency in business process models. They provide a conceptual basis for further exploration of location-awareness in the management of business processes.

scholarly journals An Optimization Approach for Mining of Process Models with Infrequent Behaviors Integrating Data Flow and Control Flow

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Li-li Wang ◽  
Xian-wen Fang ◽  
Esther Asare ◽  
Fang Huan
Keyword(s):  
Process Model ◽  
Data Flow ◽  
Process Mining ◽  
Control Flow ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Frequent Pattern ◽  
Optimization Approach ◽  
Event Log ◽  
Flow Information ◽  
And Control

Infrequent behaviors of business process refer to behaviors that occur in very exceptional cases, and their occurrence frequency is low as their required conditions are rarely fulfilled. Hence, a strong coupling relationship between infrequent behavior and data flow exists. Furthermore, some infrequent behaviors may reveal very important information about the process. Thus, not all infrequent behaviors should be disregarded as noise, and identifying infrequent but correct behaviors in the event log is vital to process mining from the perspective of data flow. Existing process mining approaches construct a process model from frequent behaviors in the event log, mostly concentrating on control flow only, without considering infrequent behavior and data flow information. In this paper, we focus on data flow to extract infrequent but correct behaviors from logs. For an infrequent trace, frequent patterns and interactive behavior profiles are combined to find out which part of the behavior in the trace occurs in low frequency. And, conditional dependency probability is used to analyze the influence strength of the data flow information on infrequent behavior. An approach for identifying effective infrequent behaviors based on the frequent pattern under data awareness is proposed correspondingly. Subsequently, an optimization approach for mining of process models with infrequent behaviors integrating data flow and control flow is also presented. The experiments on synthetic and real-life event logs show that the proposed approach can distinguish effective infrequent behaviors from noise compared with others. The proposed approaches greatly improve the fitness of the mined process model without significantly decreasing its precision.

A Dataflow-Oriented Modeling Approach to Business Processes

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgio Bruno
Keyword(s):  
Information System ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Reference Models ◽  
Modeling Approach ◽  
Extraction Algorithm ◽  
Business Entities ◽  
Oriented Approach ◽  
Selection Of

This paper presents a dataflow-oriented modeling approach (called DMA) targeted at business processes that operate on the entities forming an information system. The approach promotes the integration between business processes and information systems in that process models result from the interconnection of tasks and dataflow nodes. The latter denote flows of business entities of the same type and state. The entity types along with their relationships and attributes are shown in a companion information model. DMA leverages the dataflow to represent human decisions, which may concern the selection of the input entities when a task needs more than one, and the selection of the task with which to handle the input entities when two or more tasks are admissible. An example related to an order handling process illustrates the representation of human choices. DMA process models build on the artifact-oriented approach in that they combine the life cycles of the business entities involved. The life cycles can be separated and this facilitates the comparison with reference models. A major contribution of the paper is the presentation of the extraction algorithm which provides the separated life cycles.

Representations of Artifact-Centric Business Processes

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-61
Author(s):  
Giorgio Bruno
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Structure Dynamics ◽  
Pros And Cons ◽  
Business Entities

Current approaches to the representation of business processes can be divided into two major categories, referred to as activity-centric and artifact-centric. The former underline the tasks as the basic units of work, and the latter stress the importance of the life cycles of the artifacts (i.e., the business entities). This paper analyzes the major issues that characterize the artifact-centric approach, i.e., structure, dynamics and coordination. These issues can be dealt with in various ways, ranging from separate models to holistic ones. The pros and cons of separate models and compact ones are analyzed on the basis of how they cope with three relevant aspects, i.e., aggregation, synchronization and matching. A number of motivating examples are presented along with the notation used to define them. This notation, named ARTS (ARtifacts and TAsks), considers both artifacts and tasks as first-class citizens of business process models.

Toward a Formal Semantics for Control-Flow Process Models

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry H. Bi ◽  
John Nolt
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Process Modeling ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Formal Semantics ◽  
Control Flow ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Modeling Languages ◽  
Flow Process

A number of information systems have been developed to automate business processes. For process modeling, verification, and automation in information systems, a formal semantics of control-flow process models is needed. Usually process modeling languages (e.g., BPMN, EPC, IDEF3, UML, and WfMC standards) are used to represent control-flow process models. When these process modeling languages are developed, their informal semantics are typically described using examples, but their formal semantics are not defined. Although many different semantics for control-flow process models have been proposed, the existing semantics specifications have limitations because they do not support certain desirable features. In this paper, we propose a new formal semantics for control-flow process models. We show that it is more accurate, complete, and applicable than the existing semantics specifications.

Viewpoints on Business Process Models

2018 ◽  
pp. 788-798
Author(s):  
Giorgio Bruno
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Business Entities ◽  
Operational Activities

Over the past few years a number of viewpoints have influenced the design of notations for business processes. They emphasize the different elements (tasks, business entities and roles) that compose business process models; for this reason, they are referred to as activity-centric, data-centric, and role-centric viewpoints. The activity-centric viewpoint focuses on the orchestration of operational activities, which encompass human tasks and automatic ones. On the contrary, the data-centric viewpoint stresses the identification of the key business entities and their life cycles consisting of states and transitions. In the role-centric viewpoint, a process model is made up of several “role” models; each role model provides a restricted view of the process limited to the behavior of the role under consideration. This article illustrates how the above-mentioned viewpoints can be extracted from a global model, with the help of an example concerning the submission of papers to conferences.

Change Propagation and Conflict Resolution for the Co-Evolution of Business Processes

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (01) ◽  
pp. 1540002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Grossmann ◽  
Shamila Mafazi ◽  
Wolfgang Mayer ◽  
Michael Schrefl ◽  
Markus Stumptner
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Control Flow ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Change Propagation ◽  
Multiple Stakeholders ◽  
Reference Process ◽  
Simple Rules ◽  
Process Views ◽  
Related Process

In large organizations, multiple stakeholders may modify the same business process. This paper addresses the problem when stakeholders perform changes on process views which become inconsistent with the business process and other views. Related work addressing this problem is based on execution trace analysis which is performed in a post-analysis phase and can be complex when dealing with large business process models. In this paper, we propose a design-based approach that can efficiently check consistency criteria and propagate changes on-the-fly from a process view to its reference process and related process views. The technique is based on consistent specialization of business processes and supports the control flow aspect of processes. Consistency checks can be performed during the design time by checking simple rules which support an efficient change propagation between views and reference process.

Viewpoints on Business Process Models

2019 ◽  
pp. 405-416
Author(s):  
Giorgio Bruno
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Global Model ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Business Entities ◽  
Operational Activities

Over the past few years, a number of viewpoints have influenced the design of notations for business processes. They emphasize the different elements (tasks, business entities, and roles) that compose business process models; for this reason, they are referred to as activity-centric, data-centric, and role-centric viewpoints. The activity-centric viewpoint focuses on the orchestration of operational activities, which encompass human tasks and automatic ones. On the contrary, the data-centric viewpoint stresses the identification of the key business entities and their lifecycles consisting of states and transitions. In the role-centric viewpoint, a process model is made up of several “role” models; each role model provides a restricted view of the process limited to the behavior of the role under consideration. This chapter illustrates how the above-mentioned viewpoints can be extracted from a global model, with the help of an example concerning the submission of papers to conferences.

Handling the Dataflow in Business Process Models

2020 ◽  
pp. 1681-1695
Author(s):  
Giorgio Bruno
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Task Selection ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Business Entities ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Order Handling

This chapter stresses the importance of the dataflow in business process models and illustrates a notation called DMA that is meant to fulfill two major goals: promoting the integration between business processes and information systems and leveraging the dataflow to provide flexibility in terms of human decisions. The first goal is fulfilled by considering both tasks and business entities as first-class citizens in process models. Business entities form the dataflow that interconnects the tasks: tasks take the input entities from the input dataflow and deliver the output entities to the output dataflow. Human decisions encompass the selection of the input entities when a task needs more than one, and the selection of the task with which to handle the input entities when two or more tasks are admissible. DMA provides a number of patterns that indicate how tasks affect the dataflow. In addition, two compound patterns, called macro tasks, can be used to represent task selection issues. An example related to an order handling process illustrates the notation.

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