Title: A model-driven engineering approach to formally verify BPMN models using Petri nets

Authors: Achraf Lyazidi; Salma Mouline

Addresses: Department of Physics, LRIT (URAC No. 29) – Faculty of Sciences, Mohammed 5 University in Rabat, Morocco ' Department of Computer Science, LRIT (URAC No. 29) – Faculty of Sciences, Mohammed 5 University in Rabat, Morocco

Abstract: Business process model and notation (BPMN) is a standard for modelling business processes (BP). Despite the fact that it is a BP specific notation, it suffers from a lack of semantics. Indeed, BPMN model can be interpreted in several ways, which may lead to undesirable situations such as deadlocks. To solve this problem, we propose to use formal verification to guarantee certain properties at the BP designer. In this context, our approach is to transform BPMN models to a Petri net model. Petri nets are a formal language for distributed concurrent systems. They are suitable for modelling the behaviour of systems in terms of flows and are well supported by analysis tools. The Petri net model resulting from the transformation is then verified. We also define an interpretation module of the verification results in terms of BPMN.

Keywords: business process model and notation; BPMN; Petri nets; formal verification; model transformation; model driven engineering; MDE.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBPIM.2017.088800

International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management, 2017 Vol.8 No.4, pp.273 - 284

Received: 03 Oct 2016
Accepted: 20 Mar 2017
Published online: 19 Dec 2017 *

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