OPBUS: Automating Structural Fault Diagnosis for Graphical Models in the Design of Business Processes

Abstract

When quality is considered in the design stages of business processes, fault diagnosis must be taken into account. In the business process modeling area there exist several proposed graphical languages. These languages have many different graphical elements that could contain structural fault modes in accordance with the corresponding standard used. It is essential to aid designers to diagnose faults within the graphical models for the business processes before they are put into execution; this is a major factor in risk avoidance. The graphical models must satisfy their associated graphical structural constraints. For organizations compliance is of major importance. Automation of the diagnosis in the design stage is necessary in order to diagnose the non-compliance to the graphical structural constraints of a business process as soon as possible. This article presents a framework with automatic diagnosing capabilities. It provides an early diagnosis of badly designed business processes. This paper describes the proposed general framework and focuses on fault diagnosis where the compliance to graphical structural constraints can be analyzed using various approaches of business processes.