Reflection and reification in process system evolution: Experience and opportunity

Abstract

Process systems aim to support many people involved in many processes over a long period of time. They provide facilities for storing and manipulating processes in both the representation and enactment domains. This paper argues that process systems should support ongoing transformations between these domains, at any level of granularity. The notion of creating an enactment model instance from a representation is merely one special case transformation. The case for thinking in terms of model instances is weak, especially when process evolution is considered. This argument is supported by our experience of the ProcessWeb process system facilities for developing and evolving process models. We introduce the idea of hyper-code, which supports very general transformations between representation and enactment domains, to offer the prospect of further improvements in this area.