Title: On the transformation of control flow between block-oriented and graph-oriented process modelling languages

Authors: Jan Mendling, Kristian Bisgaard Lassen, Uwe Zdun

Addresses: Faculty of Information Technology, Queensland University of Technology, P.O. Box 2434, QLD 4000 Brisbane, Australia. ' Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, IT-parken, Aabogade 34, Aarhus N DK-8200, Denmark. ' Distributed Systems Group, Information Systems Institute, Vienna University of Technology, Argentinierstrasse 8/184-1,Wien A-040, Austria

Abstract: Much recent research work discusses the transformation between different process modelling languages. This work, however, is mainly focussed on specific process modelling languages, and thus the general reusability of the applied transformation concepts is rather limited. In this paper, we aim to abstract from concrete transformations by distinguishing two major paradigms for representing control flow in process modelling languages: block-oriented languages (such as BPEL and BPML) and graph-oriented languages (such as BPMN, EPCs, and YAWL). The contribution of this paper are generic strategies for transforming from block-oriented process languages to graph-oriented languages, and vice versa.

Keywords: business process management; model transformation; process modelling languages; workflow; BPEL; BPML; control flow; block-oriented languages; graph-oriented languages.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBPIM.2008.020973

International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management, 2008 Vol.3 No.2, pp.96 - 108

Published online: 29 Oct 2008 *

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