1 / 20

Understanding Event-Driven Process Chains (EPCs) and Their Mapping to YAWL

This chapter provides an in-depth exploration of Event-Driven Process Chains (EPCs), a modeling technique developed through collaborative research by IWi Saarbrücken and SAP in the 1990s. Integrating EPCs with the YAWL process modeling framework, the chapter addresses the challenges of mapping EPC semantics to YAWL, including state representation, connector chains, and instantiation issues. It highlights the practical use of EPCs in industry and outlines a behavior-preserving transformation approach using reachability graphs, facilitating the transition between these two process modeling languages.

muncel
Download Presentation

Understanding Event-Driven Process Chains (EPCs) and Their Mapping to YAWL

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Chapter 14EPCs Jan Mendling

  2. Agenda • Introduction to EPCs • Mapping EPCs to YAWL • Mapping YAWL to EPCs • Transformation based on Reachabilty Graph

  3. EPC Background • Event-Driven Process Chains (EPCs) have been invented in joint research project by IWi Saarbrücken and SAP in the early 1990s • EPCs are part of the ARIS (Architecture of Integrated Information Systems) methodology defined by Scheer • They are promoted by respective ARIS modeling tool family distributed by IDS Scheer AG • EPCs are used in many large scale industry projects where the ARIS software of IDS Scheer is used • EPCs are used a.o. as the language of the SAP Reference Model

  4. Introduction to EPCs • Functions • Events • Connectors (and,xor,or) • Control flow arcs

  5. EPC Semantics: Transition Relation Cuntz, Kindler, 2004

  6. EPC Semantics: Transition Relation II Non-local semantics

  7. Workflow Pattern Support

  8. Mapping EPCs to YAWL Challenges • State representationThere is no direct counterpart for YAWL conditions in EPCs • Connector chainsThere can be several connectors in a row while in YAWL splits and joins are part of tasks • Multiple start and end eventsEPCs can have multiple start and end events while YAWL requires one unique start and one unique end

  9. Mapping EPCs to YAWL

  10. Mapping EPCs to YAWL (Cont.)

  11. Mapping YAWL to EPCs Challenges • Free choice propertyEPCs are free choice while YAWL can have non-free choice behavior • Multiple instantiationYAWL offers multiple instantiation, EPCs do not • CancellationYAWL offers cancellation, EPCs do not • SyntaxIn EPCs functions and events have to alternate

  12. Mapping YAWL to EPCs

  13. Mapping YAWL to EPCs

  14. Non-free choice behavior non-free choice

  15. A corresponding EPC free choice

  16. Different YAWL, same EPC

  17. A YAWL condition and two EPC connectors

  18. Transformation using synthesis • Take YAWL • Calculate Reachability Graph • Synthesize EPC • Take EPC • Calculate Reachability Graph • Synthesize YAWL

  19. Reachability Graph

  20. Summary • EPCs are heavily used in industry practice • A mapping to YAWL is rather straight-forward • A mapping from YAWL to EPCs is challenging due to missing non-free-choice, cancellation and multiple instance support • A behavior-preserving transformation is possible using the reachability graph and synthesis techniques.

More Related