Modeling workflows, interaction patterns, web services and business processes: The ASM-based approach

Abstract

We survey the use of the Abstract State Machines (ASM) method for a rigorous foundation of modeling and validating web services, workflows, interaction patterns and business processes. We show in particular that one can tailor business process definitions in application-domain yet rigorous terms in such a way that the resulting ASM models can be used as basis for binding contracts between domain experts and IT technologists. The method combines the expressive power and accuracy of rule-based modeling with the intuition provided by visual graph-based descriptions. We illustrate this by an ASM-based semantical framework for the OMG standard for BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation). The framework supports true concurrency, heterogeneous state and modularity (compositional design and verification techniques). As validation example we report some experiments, carried out with a special-purpose ASM simulator, to evaluate various definitions proposed in the literature for the critical OR-join construct of BPMN. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.