Towards a Language for Rule-Enhanced Business Process Modeling

Abstract

Business process modeling is a commonlyused approach in the development of serviceorientedarchitectures. The previous research onthis topic demonstrated that process-oriented modelsmight be too rigid for dynamic adaptations ofthe business logic. Rule-based approaches are consideredan alternative, which offers more flexibilitythanks to the declarative nature of rules and theirunderlying reasoning algorithms. However, modelinga business process through rules is a tediousprocess for developers in terms of the overall businessprocess comprehension. In this paper, we proposea hybrid solution – a modeling language thatintegrates both rule- and process-oriented modelingperspectives. The language (Rule-based BPMN –rBPMN) is based on the integration of the BusinessProcess Modeling Notation with the REWERSERule Markup Language. In this paper, after introducingrBPMN, we report on the experience inmodeling of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA)from the perspective of message exchange patterns.