Model Transformation From BPMN Format To OpenERP Workflow And Process

Business process management is an important part in the business process.Business people usually need to simulate and model the whole business process, inorder to understand the whole transaction process and be familiar with each step.Among a variety of business process management methods, BPMN (BusinessProcess Model and Notation) and workflow management are both commonly used.This article presents a model transformation from a conceptual modelinglanguage to a platform-specific model. Business people usually do not have ITbackground when creating views of their process, nevertheless at the end they willget their designs in the corresponding platform. The idea of this project is to supportthe model transformation from concept to implementation. The source model isBPMN, which is a graphical representation used for conceptual modeling inbusiness process management. The target platform is OpenERP, which is anopen-source enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationshipmanagement (CRM) software. OpenERP consists in two functional modules,end-user processes and workflow engine. Converting BPMN files to the OpenERPworkflow format will extend a new function in business process management ofOpenERP, and help business people have a better understanding of their businessprocess.To realize the transformation, these research and implementation works havebeen done in this thesis:①The studies about features of the source model and thetarget models in the transformation, as well as the document formats of the relatedmodels.②Using model-driven architecture, a mapping relation (both theconceptual mappings and the mappings between the elements in the source andtarget documents) has been respectively built up to bridge the two different modelsfor each of the two transformation process, in order to conduct the transformationbetween the models.③The XSL documents have been desiged. The XSLdocuments can transform the source model XML document to the XML documentsin the workflow (and process) format. With the help of the XSLT processor (Saxon),the transformation can be achieved, tested and validated. Consequently it hasachieved the communication between the different platforms. This article realizes the transformation of the business process from theSignavio platform to the OpenERP system, accordingly makes business people havea better communication and cooperation, improves working efficiency, and reducespossible mistakes and omission.