Business Process Graphs: Similarity Search and Matching

Background

A business process is a collection of related tasks that can be performed to achieve a certain goal. A business process model represents the tasks in a business process as well as their relations. Typically, the model is enriched with nodes that affect the order in which tasks can be performed. These are called control-nodes or gateways. Figure 1 shows six examples of business process models in the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). Rounded rectangles represent tasks. Circles represent events that occur during a process. An empty circle represents an event that signals the start of the process. Consequently, in the first process, at the start of the process the task ‘buy goods’ is performed. A bulls-eye represents an event that signals the completion of the process. Diamonds represent gateways. A diamond marked with an ‘X’ is called an exclusive gateway and it represents a decision point at which the process can continue along exactly one out of a number of alternative paths. An exclusive gateway can also be used to merge multiple alternative paths. Similarly a diamond marked with an ‘O’ (called an inclusive gateway) represents a point at which one or more alternative paths can be chosen or merged while a diamond marked with a ‘+’ (called a parallel gateway) represents a point where multiple outgoing parallel threads are started, or a point where multiple incoming threads must be synchronized before the execution of the process can continue.

Figure 1.

A query model and five document models