Process Choreography Modeling

Abstract

A significant development in business process modeling over recent years has involved the B2B choreography perspective, where message exchanges between collaborating partners are explicitly captured. Most of the proposals to date have focused on how message exchanges can be captured through a shared, global perspective between collaborating partners and used to enforce the ordering of individual message send and receive tasks within the processes of the partners. In the wider setting of analysis and design, the B2B perspective represents an important context through which requirements for information systems and their business processes are elicited, as seen through numerous informal methods and techniques. In this chapter, we address the gap between high-level analysis and detailed design concerning the B2B context, proposing extensions for choreography languages to allow for modeling of this context to be seamless across the analysis and design phases. Based on an example taken from the supply chain management domain, we identify three important requirements for extensions: functional scoping of different areas concerning a domain, which can then be modeled and related to each other in isolation; stepwise refinement of choreography models, reminiscent of classical analysis techniques; and the introduction of conversation semantics expressing the intent of logically related message exchanges of choreographies. Accordingly, we propose extensions to choreography modeling and an improved analysis of requirements, such as breakdowns in negotiations that take place between collaborating partners, using an adaptation of BPMN.