A rule-based approach to match structural patterns with business process models

Abstract

Business process models may contain certain sets of related elements of interest to modellers. External constraints on business process models may, for example, require or prohibit the presence of a specific set of related model elements or a temporal relationship between different sets. To automatically evaluate such constraints, the existence of these sets must be verified beforehand. In this paper, we present a modelling language for structural patterns using a graphical notation. These patterns are used to describe related model elements of interest. Furthermore, we introduce a technique to match pattern models with business process models using a rule-based system. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.