Problem Statement

The modeling of inter-organizational business processes is receiving a lot of attention in the age of e-business. A number of standardization initiatives are working on standards for modeling languages that can be employed in this domain. Exemplary languages include BPML by BPMI.org, WPDL and XPDL by the Workflow Management Coalition, BPSS by the ebXML consortium, XLANG by Microsoft, WSFL by IBM, and BPEL4WS, which is an effort to combine the former two. Depending on their origin these modeling languages compete with established modeling formalisms such as Petri Nets, IDEF3, event-driven process chains or UML activity diagrams. The sheer number of different approaches creates confusion in the marketplace, because, some languages might be beneficial for the user while others are not applicable, depending on the modeling purpose. The standardization organizations are busy defining the syntax and semantics of their own approaches, but do not demonstrate the applicability of different languages to actual business problems.

Project Description

In this project we will analyze the properties of different workflow modeling languages and compare these with the requirements identified in business-to-business process design projects. As a result we strive to develop a framework for the evaluation of workflow modeling languages, which enables prospective users to judge the strengths and weaknesses of different modeling approaches. We conduct the project in cooperation with the Workflow Management Coalition and the Business Process Management Initiative, in order to apply identified improvements to their respective standards.