Checking Correctness and Compliance of Integrated Process Models

Models of different kinds are used in the area of business process management. Abstract process knowledge as well as executable process definitions can be visualized and edited in a graphical manner. The same holds true for models of process instances in some process-aware information systems (PAIS), which allow for dynamic modifications in a process instance during process runtime. An appropriate modeling tool must not only provide means to graphically edit different kinds of models on different abstraction layers but also detect or prevent violations of certain model constraints. These constraints comprise a model's internal correctness as well as a model's compliance with general process knowledge expressed in another more abstract model. In this paper we contribute an approach that allows for uniformly specifying correctness as well as compliance checks for diverse graphical process models. This is achieved by means of an integrated meta-model for models of different kinds. The integrated meta-model is referenced by a fixed set of Object Constraint Language (OCL) expressions, which specify correctness and compliance checks. We exemplify some OCL expressions and their application within a prototypical modeling tool.