We address the problem of detecting and diagnosing behavioral differences between business process models. We rely on a translation from process models into asymmetric event structures (AESs), a formalism for the abstract representation of concurrent processes in terms of events and behavioral relations between events. A na¨ıve version of this translation suffers from two limitations. First, it produces redundant difference diagnostic statements because an AES may contain unnecessary event duplications. Second, it is not applicable to process models with cycles. In order to tackle the first limitation, we rely on a technique for reducing duplication of events in AESs while preserving the behavior. For the second limitation, we propose a method for constructing a finite unfolding prefix and a corresponding AES, which captures all the possible causal dependencies between activities in the given process model. For comparison purposes, exploiting the AESs extracted from the process models, we build a sort of partial synchronized product, easing the identification of behavioral differences which can be possibly expressed in terms of behavioral relations and of repetition behaviors.
Diagnosing behavioral differences between business process models: An approach based on event structures
BALDAN, PAOLO;
2016
Abstract
We address the problem of detecting and diagnosing behavioral differences between business process models. We rely on a translation from process models into asymmetric event structures (AESs), a formalism for the abstract representation of concurrent processes in terms of events and behavioral relations between events. A na¨ıve version of this translation suffers from two limitations. First, it produces redundant difference diagnostic statements because an AES may contain unnecessary event duplications. Second, it is not applicable to process models with cycles. In order to tackle the first limitation, we rely on a technique for reducing duplication of events in AESs while preserving the behavior. For the second limitation, we propose a method for constructing a finite unfolding prefix and a corresponding AES, which captures all the possible causal dependencies between activities in the given process model. For comparison purposes, exploiting the AESs extracted from the process models, we build a sort of partial synchronized product, easing the identification of behavioral differences which can be possibly expressed in terms of behavioral relations and of repetition behaviors.Pubblicazioni consigliate
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