Checking Business Process Models for Compliance – Comparing Graph Matching and Temporal Logic

Abstract

Business Process Compliance Management (BPCM) is an integral part of Business Process Management (BPM). A key objective of BPCM is to ensure and maintain compliance of business processes models with certain regulations, e.g. governmental laws. As legislation may change fast and unexpectedly, automated techniques for compliance checking are of great interest among researchers and practitioners. Two dominant concepts in this area are graph-based pattern matching and pattern matching based on temporal logic. This paper compares these two approaches by implementing four compliance patterns from literature with both approaches. It discusses what requirements both approaches have towards business process models and shows how to meet them. The results show that temporal logic is not able to fully capture all four patterns.