Artifact-centric Business Process Modeling And Analyzing

One of the new trends in business process management is data-centric. BusinessArtifact is a data entity which records the business process. The Artifact-oriented BPMbecomes a focus in the research of BPM. Business process model provides business userswith the ability to represent, analyze and optimize the process. The modeling approach ofArtifact-centric combines data and process. It tracks the critical business data during themodeling process. The following five aspects are studied in this paper.First, the Artifact structure and operations are defined with graphical XML schemadefinition language. In order to model the Artifact-centric business process, a computablemodel named XAr/T-net is presented based on the combination of XML document andprocess definition with Petri net. The business process structures and the Artifact featuresare analyzed using the coverability graph in Petri net.Second, an Artifact-centric business process conceptual model X_ArtiFlow isproposed. The storage formats of the basic elements in the model are defined in XML.The basic structures and design rules of the model are given. By analyzing the numberand type of the transmission pipelines which are contained in a service element, thepersistence and uniquness of Artifact are checked. The model integrity is checked bycnverting it to an undirected graph and then deciding the connectivity.Third, the satisfiability of Artifact lifecycle in X_ArtiFlow is analyzed. From theperspective of attributes assignment, a method to model the Artifact lifecycle is putforward. Six patterns are summarized which describe the sequence of assigning values tothe Artifact attributes. The patterns can be transformed to a1-safe Petri net on the basis ofwhich the Artifact lifecycle model is defined. It is proved that the Petri net reachabilitytree can be used to describe the lifecycle. Then the service element in X_ArtiFlow isdescribed from Artifact type, precondition and effection in three aspects. Artifact statetree is extracted from X_ArtiFlow according to the relationship among the serviceelements. The algorithm is designed to compare the features between Artifact state treeand Artifact lifecycle tree so as to analyze the satisfiability of Artifact lifecycle. Fourth, the validity of a business Artifact is analyzed. With extending time attributeof Artifact, the formal definitions are given, such as Artifact, complete Artifact, businessrequest and Artifact validity. An Artifact business request model is presented based onTime Petri net. The time characteristic of the model is analyzed to get the state classdiagram. It is proved that this diagram can be used to describe the business request to theArtifact instance. The validity of an Artifact is determined by the comparation between acomplete Artifact and the state class diagram both from state validity and time validity.Finally, the architecture of Artifact-centric business process management is given.Software named X_ArtiFlow model manager is developed as the important fundmentalcomponent. And the methods of Artifact-centric business process modeling and analyzingare tested in a prototype of business process management system.