International Business Machines Corporation

Hagen Voelzer

Cedric Favre

Jussi H Vanhatalo

Simon D Moser

Jochen M Kuester

Jana Koehler

Christian Gerth

Felix Feger

A new technique to analyze the control-flow, i.e., the workflow graph of a business process model, which is called symbolic execution, is provided. Acyclic workflow graphs that may contain inclusive OR-gateways are considered; a symbolic execution for them is defined, which runs in quadratic time. In particular, this symbolic execution essentially comprises labeling edges of nodes of the graph such that a label assigned to a first edge comprises a set of one or more edge identifiers, each identifying a second edge that is an outgoing edge of an XOR-split or an IOR-split node in the graph, whereby executing the second edge ensures that the first edge will be executed. Such a scheme may permit a decision for any pair of control-flow edges or tasks of the workflow graph whether they are sometimes, never, or always reached concurrently. This has different applications in finding control- and data-flow errors.

Computer-implemented method, computer program product and system for analyzing a control-flow in a business process model

A system and associated method for hierarchically decomposing a workflow graph G into a process structure tree PST. The workflow graph G is a two-terminal graph parsed into a tree T having triconnected components. Boundary pairs of all triconnected components in T are computed and fragments are discovered with boundary pairs. T is restructured into PST pursuant to categories of triconnected components in T. PST is deterministic and modular. PST represents a block-based process model that has fine blocks of execution units. PST is computed in time linear to the number of edges in G.

System and method for hierarchically decomposing process model

Methods and apparatus are provided for production of a difference log in a data processing system. The difference log defines differences between process models defined in system memory. For each of the process models, model structure data provided in memory defines a hierarchy of SESE regions representing the structure of that model. Also provided in memory are model comparison data defining correspondences between elements of the models, and region comparison data defining correspondences between regions of the SESE region hierarchies for the models. The model comparison and region comparison data are analyzed to identify differences between the SESE region hierarchies, and a difference log defining said differences is produced. In preferred systems, the model structure data and the region comparison data are computed for the models, and the difference log has a hierarchical structure corresponding to the structure of the process models.

Difference log production for model merging

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Rueschlikon, Switzerland

Hagen Voelzer