Specification and verification of complex business processes - a high-level petri net-based approach

Abstract

The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) has been widely used as a tool for business process modeling. However, BPMN suffers from a lack of standard formal semantics. This weakness can lead to inconsistencies, ambiguities, and incompletenesses within the developed models. In this paper we propose a formal semantics of BPMN using recursive ECATNets. Owing to this formalism, a large set of BPMN features such cancellation, multiple instantiation of subprocesses and exception handling can be covered while taking into account the data flow aspect. The benefits and usefulness of this modelling are illustrated through two examples. Moreover, since recursive ECATNets semantics is expressed in terms of conditional rewriting logic, one can use the Maude LTL model checker to verify several behavioral properties related to BPMN models.