Soundness of EPC Process Models with Objects and Roles

Abstract

The verification of business process models is an important step in the design phase of process-aware information systems. While a process model often describes different perspectives like control flow, object flow, and role assignment, most of the contributions in the areas of verification consider only the control flow. Hardly any work considers these three perspectives in a combined verification approach. In this paper we address this gap and introduce Integrated EPCs (iEPCs), a business process modeling language that extends EPCs with a concept of object flow and role assignment. By abstracting from the subtle differences of recent EPC semantics definitions, we show how any of these formalizations can be enhanced with transition rules that consider object existence and role availability as part of the state concept. Furthermore, we define three theorems that relate soundness of EPCs to soundness of iEPCs with different initial
role and object set. These theorems provide the basis for a systematic verification
approach of iEPCs that first identifies control-flow problems, then object-flow problems, and finally suitable role subsets. This way, our work contributes to a better identification of correctness issues already in conceptual process models in the early design phases.