Formalizing UML-based process models using graph transformations

Abstract

Supporting technical development processes through process management environments is vital for a project’s success. While process enactment enables a project manager to plan and monitor a process and guides the participating developers, process modeling aims at understanding, communicating and reusing process descriptions. Thus, requirements for languages supporting process enactment are quite different from those for languages supporting process modeling. In this paper we demonstrate how the task of process modeling can be tackled using a standard object-oriented modeling notation, the Unified Modeling Language. By transforming the resulting model into the formal notation of an underlying generic process model, we support its enactment. This generic model has been formally specified within the graph transformation system PROGRES. In this way we are able to provide suitable languages for process modeling and enactment within one coherent environment.