Business Process Modeling Languages Supporting Collaborative

Networks

Hodjat Soleimani Malekan and Hamideh Afsarmanesh

Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, Post bus 94323, 1090 GH Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Keywords: Business Processes, Collaborative Network, Business Process Modeling Languages, Virtual Organizations

(VO), VO Breeding Environments, Service-Oriented Architecture.

Abstract: Formalizing the definition of Business Processes (BPs) performed within each enterprise is fundamental for

effective deployment of their competencies and capabilities within Collaborative Networks (CN). In our

approach, every enterprise in the CN is represented by its set of BPs, so that other enterprises can see and

potentially share them when developing integrated BPs. Adoption of a suitable BP modeling language

(BPML) is therefore critical for this purpose, while challenging due to the variety of existing tools and

standards each with different levels of expressiveness and ambiguities. So far, surveys published on BP

modeling approaches have compared several features of the main BP languages and standards. However,

these surveys mostly focus on specific standards and tools and not on different categories of BPMLs.

Moreover, there are no surveys addressing the need to fulfil CN’s requirements. Therefore, aiming to select

the most suitable BPML for the purpose of modelling and representing BPs in CNs, while overviewing the

defined BPML categories, the paper introduces a new categorization of the main BPMLs. Furthermore,

focusing on enterprise collaboration requirements, a specific set of criteria is introduced for comparing these

categories. Finally, different categories of BPMLs are compared, when addressing their suitability to

support CNs.

1 INTRODUCTION

Applying Business Process (BP) technologies,

comprising the introduced standards, tools, and

techniques, have greatly influenced enterprises

toward reducing costs, increasing productivity, and

achieving competitive advantage.

Formalizing BPs, performed at every enterprise,

constitutes a fundamental element for effective

cooperation among different enterprises within the

Collaborative Network (CN). While the BP

Management (BPM) systems can handle formally

defined BPs, there are also emerging Service

Oriented Architecture (SOA) approaches that can

utilize formalized BP definitions, to facilitate service

interoperation and enterprise collaboration

(Papazoglou and Heuvel, 2006).

Many Business Process Modeling languages

(BPMLs) and some standards are defined and being

applied to the formalization of BPs in enterprises. A

number of published surveys review the adoption

and evaluation of BPMLs (e.g. Roser and Bauer,

2005); (Ko et al. ,2009) and have already addressed

the comparison between some features of the main

BPMLs and the standards.

The existing surveys however mostly, focus on

pair-wise or group comparison of BP standards or

tools (e.g. BPMN, BPEL, etc.), and do not

emphasize different categories of BPML to which

these standards or tools may belong. For example

the distinct features aimed by their design, such as to

evaluate and emphasize their graphical, ontological,

executional, etc. aspects of the BP modeling, is not

assessed for this purpose.

In this papers, besides introducing a set of

categories for BPMLs, aimed to support their

evaluation and selection of more suitable BPMLs in

support of CNs, a novel analysis method is

introduced to distinguish CN’s peculiarities and to

appraise different BPML categories against them.

Hence, we first briefly present the main concepts

of CNs and BPs, and motivating the CNs, needs to

work with include formalized BPs (in section2).

Then, we review the existing categorizations of the

main BPMLs, and introduce our categorization (in

section3).

258

Soleimani Malekan H. and Afsarmanesh H..

Business Process Modeling Languages Supporting Collaborative Networks.

DOI: 10.5220/0004420602580266

In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2013), pages 258-266

ISBN: 978-989-8565-61-7

 2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

In Section 4, we structurally focus on the

collaboration purposes, distinguish a number of most

relevant criteria for comparing the introduced BPML

categories, and analyze them for the aim of

supporting enterprise collaborations.

Finally, our evaluation approach is discussed (in

section5), and our conclusions are presented (in

section6).

2 FORMALIZED BPs IN CNs

By collaboration, enterprises gain opportunities to

share their resources, including knowledge, and

information. This can be best achieved, by means of

formalized BPs. BP integration is aimed by

enterprises and also other organizations that wish to

compose value-added services, beyond the

capabilities of their individual organizations

(Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh, 2008).

Below, after reviewing some principal

background definitions for CNs and BPs, we present

an analysis of the BPMLs from the CN requirements

point of view.

2.1 Background Definitions

A common definition of Collaborative Network is

presented in (Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh,

2008) as: “an alliance constituting a variety of

entities that are autonomous, geographically

distributed, and heterogeneous in terms of their

operating environment, decision making, culture and

social capital, that cooperate/collaborate to better

achieve common/compatible goals, and their

interactions are supported by the computer

networks.”

The two main categories of CNs are the: Virtual

Organization (VO) and VO Breeding Environment

(VBE). In a VO, partners share their BPs and other

resources to accomplish their common goals.

VBEs, which establish long-term alliances of

organizations, capture and save BPs of partners in

their directories. The broker in the VBE context then

considers selecting and integrating BPs of different

organizations to form new VOs responding to

emerged opportunities. (Afsarmanesh et al., 2011).

BP is defined as a series of one or more linked

procedures or activities, which collectively realize a

business objective or policy-related goal. BPM

comprises concepts, methods, and techniques to

support organizational aspect of processes, which

are needed for the design, administration,

configuration, enactment, and analysis of BPs.

BP modeling focuses on design and execution

aspects of the BPs (Havey, 2009). BP Modeling

aims at representing an abstract but meaningful

demonstration of the real business domains.

2.2 BPMLs in Support of

Collaboration

Beginning of 90s WFMS, which initially was

designed for automatic transformation of electronic

documents, introduced new tools to enable business

analysts with design and define BPs between

systems. For depicting information exchange among

systems, the behavioural concepts (e.g. sequence and

merge) were then applied in BP modelling.

Later in 90s, based on the Business Process Re-

engineering (BPR) as well as embedding the best

business practices, vendors were able to integrate

separate software modules, under the so-called

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. To

support ERPs, the BPMLs have focused on dynamic

aspects of the BPs. Nevertheless the interactions

between the designed modules were not so easy to

achieve.

For the sake of integrating legacy systems into

customized applications and ERP modules, the

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) (Lee and

Siau, 2003) has tried to remedy the problem of

inefficient BPs’ integration. So, interaction-enabling

entities (e.g. messages) gained significance. This

level of collaboration provided an infrastructure for

cooperation of enterprises through resource sharing,

while preserving their heterogeneity.

During the late 90s, deployment of XML for

integration, changed the co-working intensity of

enterprises to a higher level, called business to

business (B2B) (Havey, 2009).

The challenge of coordinating the BPs adopted

by companies, yielded in integrating autonomous

and independent applications, via loosely coupled

mechanism of SOA (Papazoglou and Heuvel, 2006).

SOA is applied to support alignment and

integration of web services, to achieve their

successful cooperation. Furthermore, the alliance of

standard bodies, e.g. BPMI and OMG, in

introducing the BPMN, facilitated the cooperation

among organizations.

At Present, the BP mining (van der Aalst and

Dustar, 2012) and diagnosis approaches that address

BP monitoring and their continuous improvement,

are promising research lines in BP context.

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3 CATEGORIZATION

STRUCTURE FOR BPMLs

Targeting the variety of existing BP languages and

standards, every BP modelling category introduced

in the main related publications focuses on a set of

attributes and specification of the BPMLs. The focus

of our categories lies on identifying the capabilities

as well as adaptability features in each category, in

relation to the criteria of facilitating collaboration

through formalized BPs. Therefore, we first study a

large number of related scientific publications, in

order to select the set of most recent and relevant

BPML publications.

In this section, first we briefly address the most

relevant categories that are defined for BPML in

publications, and then introduce our categorization.

3.1 Classification Approaches

Current reviews of BPMLs can be divided into two

main classes of “General Reviews” and “Particular

Evaluation”. Publications that can be classified as

“General Review” are mostly focused on general

uses, and on encompassing the main specifications

of the BPML categories. For example, (Ko et al.,

2009) is a survey focusing on Business Process

Management standards, and (Havey, 2009) focuses

on “good” BP modeling architecture.

Another example is (Mili et al., 2010) that

focuses on overview of BP Modeling, where it first

addresses business goals and aspects (i.e. functional,

informational, etc.), and then introduces the four

categories of BPMLs, including: Traditional BPML

(e.g. IDEF), Object-Oriented BPML (e.g. UML),

Dynamic BPML (e.g. WS-BPEL), and Process

Integration BPML (e.g. WS-CDL).

On the other hand, publications in the “Particular

Evaluations” class focus on BPML categorization

for specific purposes (Roser and Bauer, 2005); (Lu

and Sadiq, 2007); (and De Nicola et al., 2007). For

example, in (De Nicola et al., 2007) the categories

are introduced around the subject of “introducing an

ontological approach for BP Modeling”, including

Descriptive (e.g. BPMN), Procedural (e.g. XPDL),

Formal (e.g. PSL), and Ontology-based (e.g. OWL-

s).

3.2 Proposed BPML Categories

Considering the general purpose of our research, and

comparing to the above-mentioned different

classifications, we have first design a more

comprehensive framework with six classes of:

“graphical”, “formal”, “executional, “ontological”,

“interoperational”, and “monitorial” to capture all

kinds of BPMLs, as addressed in table 1.

Due to space limitation, the main characteristics

of each of these six categories, and their main

representative example BPMLs are only briefly

described in the following subsections, while the

main examples are also represented in table 1. Please

note that in principle, it is possible for a BPML to be

represented as an example of more than one

category. However, here we have placed each

BPML only in its most representative category.

Table 1: Our introduced categorisations.

BPML Categories Categories’ Members Examples

Graphical IDEF, EPC, UML, BPMN

Formal Petri-Net, Pi-Calculus, PSL, Reo

Executional BPEL, WS-CDL, XPDL, YAWL

Ontological OWL-s, WSMO, BPDM

Interoperational RosettaNet, ebXML (BPSS)

Monitorial BPRI, BPQL

The reasoning behind our categorization and how

we outline the six specific classes is depicted in the

graph of figure1.

Figure 1: A tree graph of our categorization method.

Graphical BPMLs: The classical generation of

these categories of modeling languages mostly

emphasizes on illustrating the system behaviour and

its abstraction in graphical picturesque format. They

are not typically formal.

Formal BPMLs: Founded upon mathematical

principles, these languages have emerged. Although,

adoption graphical symbols has happened in some of

these languages, but difficulties in user’s

understanding and interaction hold them mostly at

theoretical and mainly academic utilizations.

Executional BPMLs: Computer executable

languages let BPs to be deployed by software

engines. They are developed based on XML

structure, and clarify BPs by their computerized

Uses textual

block-orientation

Uses

mathematical

Foundation

Uses full

capability of

computer

automation

BPML

Graphical

Formal

Ontological

Monitorial

Executional

Inter -Operational

Uses graphical

representation

for BP flow

Requires XML

formats

Uses a

metamodel

ontology for

BP definition

Extends interaction of

collaborative processes

Facilitates

Monitoring,

and mining

of BPs

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semantics, and mostly industries use them for BP

modelling and service invocation.

Ontological BP Languages: As anticipated, this

category focuses on modeling semantic capture.

Also, try to constitute the base for an increasing

number of BP modelling languages, each proposing

different metamodels. The ontological layer in these

languages clarifies the roles, entities, and

interactions. This category has also the advantages

of using XML formats.

Interoperational BPMLs: Modeling public

sharable processes of partners, especially in E-

Business interactions, among all business partners, is

the key concern in this category. XML standard

series are the main players in collaborative business

processes.

Monitorial BPMLs: Contemporary BP modeling

trends focus on diagnosis iteration of the BPM

Lifecycle. The diagnosis consists of monitoring and

resolving the deadlocks or problems in BP’s flow.

Furthermore, extract and unambiguous approach for

recognizing BPs based on a dynamic logging of

process behaviour, the so-called process mining (van

der Aalst and Dustar, 2012).

4 BPML EVALUATION FOR CN

CRITERIA SUPPORT

Putting emphasis on categories and not every

BPML, multi-aspect evaluation of a phenomenon

requires a methodology, to support maximal

coverage of the target area. For the purpose of

appraising BPMLs in supporting CNs requirements,

we should consider both the BPs and the CNs

aspects simultaneously. So, our designed evaluation

methods as well as our evaluation process are

discussed in following sub-sections, respectively.

4.1 Evaluation Method

For our evaluation, we are following a goal-based

approach, described in (Goldkuhl and Lagsten,

2012). Several goal-settings have been introduced by

different approaches. For instance a set of generic

software process modeling objectives have been

specified in (Curtis et al., 1992). Non-functional

requirment’s objectives are presented in (Chung and

do Prado, 2009) supporting process dependency

discovery, needed for change management. These

context-aware objectives still hold today. But for our

purposes, to support more effective BP collaboration

in a CN, we further add the criteria “to support

enterprise collaboration” into this context.

Extending the epistemological-view framework

for BPMLs evaluation, introduced by (Frank, 1998);

in our goal-oriented approach consist of the

following steps: “Focus” on language categories,

design the “contextual model” for evaluation”,

“review” the context and then distinguish the

“primary” and “complementary guidelines” to

evaluate our findings through “context analysis”.

Based on the debate in section 2, our primary

aim is to focus on supporting collaboration through

formalized BPs and evaluating BPML categories for

this purpose extract the collaborative intention

aspects within the CNs.

This goal-based approach has focused on

qualitative criteria and indicators, related to setting

goals systematically. As the evaluation method, we

adopt Critical Success Factors (CSFs) method, and

follow the requirements of achieving established

objectives, by running a Critical Success Factors

Analysis (CFA) explained in (OASIS, 2008)

CNs have their particularity, and the formalized

BPMLs should support achieving CNs’ goals. To

better characterize the particularities of the CNs, and

especially VOs and VBEs, we apply the “Reference

model for Collaborative Networks (ARCON)”

(Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh, 2008).

We have performed a CFA study to find out the

CN-compliant CSFs and the vital requirement

indicators for achieving our goal. This study is based

on technical reviews and experts opinions. We then

discuss the BPML categories versus the identified

and recognized CN requirement indicators.

4.2 Evaluation Process

According to the (ARCON) model (Camarinha-

Matos and Afsarmanesh, 2008), and our discussion

and CN’s definition in section 2.1, the following

aspects indicate the main constitutional objective

themes in the CN discipline, extracted from its

standard definition:

 Goal-orientation [focusing on goals through

business interactions]

 Infrastructure for Commonality [support the

co-working and coordination toward goals]

 Managing Node Heterogeneity [support non-

uniform properties, e.g. operational processes]

 Network enabled [supported by the computer

networks]

As the first CSF, to enable successful collaboration,

BP modeling tool should provide enough

“comprehensibility” for partners (e.g. BP Analysts).

The “ease of use” is another issue, which supports

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convenient interoperation through CNs.

“expressiveness for behaviour”, is the next

challenging issue for enactment of BPs in CNs.

Also, for cost-effective achievement of goal in CNs,

“accessibility” of BP documents and standards has

to be considered. The coverage of CN’s objective

and the introduced CSFs are illustrated in table 2.

The asterisk represents the minimal coverage

between our CSF and CN’s objective elements.

Table 2: Coverage of CN’s objectives and CSFs.

CSFs

CN’s

Objectives

Comprehen-

sibility

Ease of Use

Expressiveness

behaviour

Accessibility

Goal-Orientation *

Commonality * *

Heterogeneity * * *

Network enabled *

Finally, we introduce a series of generic required

indicators from BP modeling context to appraise the

suitability of our categories for CNs.

Understandability: Ease of interpretation and

capture by which under specified circumstances, the

user can interpret an instance, model, analyse, and

develop the BP model (Mendling et al., 2007)

Expressability: Capability to represent the process

model’s attributes like: control, resources, flow

structures, data, and etc.(Kiepuszewski, 2002)

Flexibility: The ease with which in BP modeling the

modifications are possible in types and instances,

based on incomplete bstraction (Lu and Sadiq,

2007).

Availability: The amount and degree to which

business process modeling documents in specific

formats, and standards are accessible and adoptable.

They are ready-to-use for desired collaboration by

the organizations (Milanivic, 2008).

Enactability: The ambition of acquiring capability

to completely execute of the BP model directly and

without exploiting extra tools and information

(Russell, 2006).

Figure 2 represents the CFA analysis diagram.

The figure depicts our evaluation method.

5 DISCUSSION

We are following a two-dimensional descriptive

evaluation. The first dimension consists of BP

modeling languages categories. Six comprehensive

categories are introduced and defined. Please note

that we focus here on BPML categories instead of

the languages, so there are a number of choices of

BPMLs in each category for CNs to select. Due to

their importance in our evaluation model, the

analysis of six categories versus requirements

indicators are further defined and exemplified.

Figure 2: Interconnections in CFA Diagram.

5.1 Availability

The notion of availability has its roots in reliability

idea, which implies, ratio of the time that users have

received the service according to prior level of

agreements. Unavailability of a modeling BP

language happens when we don’t have “steady-

state”, “intervals”, and “user-perceived” availability

(Milanivic et al., 2008). For our evaluation, we

assume availability as the existence of BPML

documents within the context of CNs.

The annual research of BPM Market (Wolf and

Harmon, 2012), since 2005, thoroughly has surveyed

the BPM trends in different aspects. In its 2012

report, the survey runs around evaluation of BPM is

addressed in that report.

It can be noticed that the availability of graphical

BPMLs is at the highest level. For example BPMN’s

usage is within 60% of all organizations.

Meanwhile, there is less availability for ontological

BPMLs (e.g. BPDM). Although, the debate on the

timely development of trends is not the focus of this

paper, but decrease in attraction level of BPEL

during recent years is noticeable. Even interest and

availability of UML and EPC slightly decrease. Also

according to that survey the pervasiveness of the rest

of BPML categories (e.g. interoperational, formal)

are the lowest in usage ranking. So, it is expected

that organizations initiate collaboration in CNs

applying graphical BPMLs, and especially BPMN.

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5.2 Enactability

As it is discussed in (van der Aalst et al., 2003) that

after accomplishing “process design” and “system

configuration” at the third step of the BPM’s

lifecycle “process enactment” is located right before

the “diagnosis” step. Which make it challenging.

The more independent is the BPML from the

technology and vendor executable environments, the

better its enactability in CNs.

Adopting formal semantics for better enactment

(ter Hofstede et al., 2010) supports – and does not

contradict the increase in understandability (van der

Aalst et al. 2003) – in support of the requirements in

CNs.

Executional BPMLs enable the enactments of

BPs, for sharing BPs and automatically executing

them through machine understandable structures.

But, despite their common executional capabilities,

they have their particularities.

BPEL describes behaviour of BPs within

interaction between process and its partner, and

efficiently supports orchestration. WS-CDL

executional aspect consists of choreography. Within

the executional BPML category, some of the

languages such as BPEL have restrictive syntax, and

some (e.g. YAWL) have exact executional syntax

(ter Hoftstede 2010).

Some formal languages - except embedded

notions like (pi-calculus in WSCDL) provide

graphical enactability interface, e.g. in reo and Petri

net. Ontological BPMLs, because of their XML

supporting structures have convenient level of

enactability

In interoperational BPML category, XML

enactability is embedded, but with some difficulties

e.g. naming and XML reusability in RosettaNet

(Damodaran, 2004) or deficiencies in event handling

during interactions (Green et al., 2007). Ontological

BPML category focuses on semantic aspects (e.g.

OWL-s), and runs enactment in an abstract level.

5.3 Expressability

To express different kinds of BPs (e.g. private,

public, or collaborative) in the CN environment, the

expressability power of BPML is important. The

expressive power of modeling language represents

the possibility of expressing constructs in direct or

indirect manner (Kiepuszewski et al., 2002). These

constructs comprise: control, resources, data,

organization, execution, and behaviour of a business

models. Expressability encompasses the notion of

suitability, which focuses on modeling and implies

conformance of the BPML with for instance 43

workflow patterns introduced in (Russell et al.,

2006). Although, the evaluated domain in that paper

does not focus on BPML categories, but provides a

general inception for comparison of BPML

categories.

While we map BPMLs’ evaluation in (Russell et

al., 2006) to our proposed categories, a number of

these patterns e.g. “discrimination”, “milestone”,

“partially join”, etc. are the kind of patterns which

languages and standards have difficulties in

expressing them.

Nevertheless generally, the graphical BPML

category has better compatibility, while in

executional category- except for YAWL- languages

have some deficiencies, for example for supporting

“Arbitrary Cycle”, because of their rigidity in

capturing real-world abstraction.

Formal languages category members have good

capability of expressiveness, because of their

mathematical foundation, e.g. Petri-Net; expressive

power (van der Aalst et al., 2003) used in workflow

pattern design, or constraint automata is used in the

Reo. Ontological languages use logical basis for

instance in OWL-s for representing better

expressiveness.

5.4 Flexibility

Due to inherit dynamicity of CNs, the flexibility of

the applied BPML for representing their BPs is

fundamental for representation. BPMLs try to

sustain their dynamicity in coping with expected and

unexpected changes, through adopting flexibility. In

(Schonenberg, 2008) four types of flexibility are

mentioned as follows: “design”, ”deviation”,

”underspecification” and “change”.

For flexibility support, mostly in two first above-

types, BPMLs rely on their pre-design notations and

are abstract from flexibility concerns. On the other

hands, the block-based (rule-based) BPMLs could

manage the flexibility in higher level (e.g. deviation

or underspesification) (Lu and Sadiq, 2007).

In the graphical BPML category, flexibility

within different languages and standards is

considered in different ways. In BPMN, by

predicting three types of diagram for collaboration,

and for the concepts of pool and lane, the

decomposition for changes is possible. The frame

and frame heading techniques in UML 2.0 Activity

Diagram let the elements of the languages to be

defined and described in a modular and flexible

structure. So, “design and deviation” are supported.

In formal category, mathematical concepts help

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to retain model identity, for instance the structure of

Atomic and Complex activities in PSL. Besides,

graphical representation in Petri-Net and Reo

simplifies the modification flexibilities. So, “design

and deviation” are supported.

The XML-based structures usually support

flexibility in design and changes, and even

underspesification, to certain extent (Schonenberg,

2008). YAWL, BEPL (inter-relations), and WSCDL

(choreography) support various types of flexibility.

Even RosettaNet PIP techniques, channelizes the

modifications. This benefit supports within block-

based structure. Ontological BPML category

considers flexibility at convenient level, which let

modification to be based on primary definition of

BPs (e.g. process model definition in OWL-s).

5.5 Understandability

CN stackholders are quite varied, and BP

representation shall facilitate their proper

underestandability for their interactions. This notion

has been reviewed and analysed during several

works especially verses the complexity as the other

extreme. Generally, understandability comprises the

following two aspects in (Mendling et al., 2007):

 Model-related factors, which affect the

understandability, e.g. unambiguity, simplicity.

 Person-related factors, which have close relations

to domain knowledge of participants and their

experiences.

Although, for supporting understandability, there is

a number of guidelines e.g. the smaller size of the

model, makes models better for understanding but,

the ease of “comprehension of a model”, “presenting

without error”, and “labelling less ambiguous”

constitute main understandability’s principles in

BPMLs.

Usually, graph-based languages are more

understandable than rule-based ones (Lu and Sadiq,

2007). That is also the reason why they become

more popular at enterprises. However, within

graphical standards, BPMN is more complex for

understanding compared to UML and EPC (Green et

al., 2007). Even by adopting graphical depiction and

interfaces, the formal category of BPMLs is less

understandable than graphical languages, namely

EPC versus Petri-Net.

Executional and ontological BPML categories

because of having less cooperation with human side,

their understandability is under criticism. Also, the

interoperational standards (e.g. the PIP technics in

Rosettanet) are at a more abstract level of

(Damodaran, 2004).

5.6 Comparing Results

A set of requirement indicators is represented for

evaluating BPML categories at the second level of

our evaluation. Through goal-based approach and by

using a CFA method, we have identified six

requirement criteria that help us to measure the

collaboration support by BPMLs. The result of our

evaluation is summarized in table 3.

In this table we use four levels of support as:

Strong, Sufficient, Moderate and Not addressed

levels, from the CN’s members relative points of

view. Because of the analytical theme of the paper,

we have opted for the qualitative survey method.

As it is studied in previous sections, the

graphical category has the main advantages of

understandability and availability. Executional

category is strong in enactability and flexibility of

BPs, further to offering less ambiguity whose

importance in modelling the real world should not

be disregarded. Although lacking interactive

graphical depiction, needed for less technical users,

is a serious criticism.

Table 3: Summary of comparisons.

Requirements

indicators in

support

of CN

Modeling

Languages