A Framework for Creating Domain-specific Process Modeling Languages

Henning Heitkötter

2012

Abstract

Using domain-specific modeling languages to capture business processes can greatly enhance quality and efficiency of process modeling, because language and models are more expressive, concise and easy to understand. The development of domain-specific languages (DSLs) with accompanying tools and transformations is, however, a complex, time-consuming, and costly task. An efficient and simple approach to creating process modeling languages (PMLs) for specific business domains by reusing common parts is needed, where each resulting language is still optimally adjusted to its domain. For each of these languages, the abstract and concrete syntax have to be defined as well as transformations to more general languages. This paper presents DSLs4BPM, a generic framework for PMLs, which employs DSL modularization concepts to allow the derivation of domain-specific PMLs. The framework provides elements common to process modeling and a basic transformation to the generic Business Process Model and Notation 2.0. DSLs are created by adding own types to the framework language and own rules to the transformation at predefined extension points. The approach has been implemented based on the Eclipse Modeling Framework.

References

  1. Becker, J., Algermissen, L., Pfeiffer, D., and Räckers, M. (2007). Local, participative process modelling - the PICTURE-approach. In Proc. of the 1st International Workshop on Management of Business Processes in Government (BPMGOV).
  2. Becker, J., Breuker, D., Pfeiffer, D., and Räckers, M. (2009a). Constructing comparable business process models with domain specific languages - an empirical evaluation. In 17th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), pages 1-13.
  3. Becker, J., Weiss, B., and Winkelmann, A. (2009b). Developing a business process modeling language for the banking sector - a design science approach. In Proc. of the 15th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS).
  4. Brahe, S. and Østerbye, K. (2006). Business process modeling: Defining domain specific modeling languages by use of UML profiles. In Model Driven Architecture - Foundations and Applications, pages 241-255.
  5. Dumas, M. and ter Hofstede, A. (2001). UML activity diagrams as a workflow specification language. In UML 2001 - The Unified Modeling Language. Modeling Languages, Concepts, and Tools, pages 76-90.
  6. Heitkoetter, H. (2011). Transforming PICTURE to BPMN 2.0 as part of the model-driven development of electronic government systems. In Proc. of the 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2011).
  7. Karow, M., Pfeiffer, D., and Räckers, M. (2008). Empiricalbased construction of reference models in public administrations. In Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik 2008. Referenzmodellierung, pages 1613-1624.
  8. Krahn, H., Rumpe, B., and Völkel, S. (2008). MontiCore: Modular development of textual domain specific languages. In Proc. of TOOLS EUROPE.
  9. Margaria, T. and Steffen, B. (2004). Lightweight coarsegrained coordination: a scalable system-level approach. International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer, 5(2-3):107-123.
  10. Matzner, M., Voigt, M., Alexandrini, F., Araujo, T. S., and Becker, J. (2009). Process modelling in brazilian public administrations: The domain-specific PICTURE approach. In 15th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS).
  11. Mernik, M., Heering, J., and Sloane, A. M. (2005). When and how to develop domain-specific languages. ACM Computing Surveys, 37(4):316-344.
  12. OASIS Standard (2007). Web Services Business Process Execution Language Version 2.0.
  13. Object Management Group (2008). Meta Object Facility (MOF) 2.0 Query/View/Transformation specification.
  14. Object Management Group (2010). UML 2.3 superstructure specification.
  15. Object Management Group (2011). Business Process Model and Notation 2.0 specification.
  16. Recker, J. (2010). Opportunities and constraints: the current struggle with BPMN. Business Process Management Journal, 16(1):181-201.
  17. Recker, J., Indulska, M., Rosemann, M., and Green, P. (2010). The ontological deficiencies of process modeling in practice. European Journal of Information Systems, 19(5):501-525.
  18. Recker, J. C., Rosemann, M., Indulska, M., and Green, P. (2009). Business process modeling : a comparative analysis. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 10(4):333-363.
  19. Spinellis, D. (2001). Notable design patterns for domainspecific languages. The Journal of Systems and Software, 56(1):91-99.
  20. Steffen, B. and Margaria, T. (1999). METAFrame in practice: Design of intelligent network services. In Correct System Design, LNCS 1710, pages 390-415.
  21. Steffen, B., Margaria, T., Nagel, R., Jörges, S., and Kubczak, C. (2007). Model-driven development with the jABC. In Proc. of the 2nd International Haifa Verification Conference (HVC).
  22. Steinberg, D., Budinsky, F., Paternostro, M., and Merks, E. (2009). EMF: Eclipse Modeling Framework, 2nd Edition. Addison-Wesley Longman.
  23. van Deursen, A., Klint, P., and Visser, J. (2000). Domainspecific languages: An annotated bibliography. ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 35(6):26-36.
  24. Voelter, M. (2010). Implementing feature variability for models and code with projectional language workbenches. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development, pages 41-48.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Heitkötter H. (2012). A Framework for Creating Domain-specific Process Modeling Languages . In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Software Paradigm Trends - Volume 1: ICSOFT, ISBN 978-989-8565-19-8, pages 127-136. DOI: 10.5220/0004024201270136


in Bibtex Style

@conference{icsoft12,
author={Henning Heitkötter},
title={A Framework for Creating Domain-specific Process Modeling Languages},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Software Paradigm Trends - Volume 1: ICSOFT,},
year={2012},
pages={127-136},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004024201270136},
isbn={978-989-8565-19-8},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Software Paradigm Trends - Volume 1: ICSOFT,
TI - A Framework for Creating Domain-specific Process Modeling Languages
SN - 978-989-8565-19-8
AU - Heitkötter H.
PY - 2012
SP - 127
EP - 136
DO - 10.5220/0004024201270136