The document presents an approach for detecting process antipatterns in BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) processes. It defines seven antipatterns using rules of inference and describes a method to transform BPEL processes into a simplified generic model. An experiment applies the approach to detect two antipatterns in three sample BPEL processes with limited detection success due to the small process sizes. Future work is needed to automate the approach and detect more antipatterns in larger, real-world processes.
1. Detection of Process Antipatterns:
An BPEL Perspective
Francis Palma, Naouel Moha, and Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc
MRI-BP 2013
Ptidej Team, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada
Latece, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
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Motivation
Related Work
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Context
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• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• Service-based systems (SBSs)
• Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)
• Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)
• Service orchestration using control logics
• Design patterns and Antipatterns
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Motivation
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Web servicesClient applicationUsers
messages messages
BPEL Engine
BPEL Process
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Motivation
Related Work
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Web servicesClient applicationUsers
messages messages
BPMN model
BPEL Engine
BPEL Process
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Motivation
Related Work
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Web servicesClient applicationUsers
messages messages
Early design
anomalies
BPMN model
BPEL Engine
BPEL Process
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Motivation
Related Work
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Experiments
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Web servicesClient applicationUsers
messages messages
Early design
anomalies
BPMN model
BPEL process
BPEL Engine
BPEL Process
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Motivation
Related Work
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Experiments
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Web servicesClient applicationUsers
messages messages
Early design
anomalies
BPMN model
BPEL processTransformation errors
BPEL Engine
BPEL Process
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Motivation
Related Work
Approach
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Conclusion
Context
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Web servicesClient applicationUsers
messages messages
Early design
anomalies
BPMN model
BPEL process
Conceptual
mismatch
Transformation errors
BPEL Engine
BPEL Process
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Context
Motivation
Related Work
Approach
Experiments
Conclusion
Context
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Web servicesClient applicationUsers
messages messages
Early design
anomalies
BPMN model
BPEL process
Conceptual
mismatch
Transformation errors
BPEL Engine
BPEL Process
Evolution Evolution
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Motivation
Related Work
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Conclusion
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Web servicesClient applicationUsers
messages messages
Early design
anomalies
Transformation errors
BPMN model
BPEL process
Conceptual
mismatch
Antipatterns!
BPEL Engine
BPEL Process
Evolution Evolution
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BPEL Engine
BPEL Process
Web servicesClient applicationUsers
messages messages
Early design
anomalies
hard to maintain
and evolve
bad quality of
service
poor design
BPMN model
BPEL process
Conceptual
mismatch
Antipatterns!
Transformation errors
Evolution Evolution
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Start Deadlock!!!
(A,B)
D
(A,B,C)
(b) Dangling Inputs and Outputs
(a) Deadlocks Through Decision-Join Pairs
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
Outline
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
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Motivation: Why Antipatterns
• Antipatterns:
- From wrong design decisions to poor solutions
• Poor solutions result:
- bad quality of service (QoS)
- less maintainability, evolvability etc.
• Detect antipatterns within processes
• Improve design and QoS
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Motivation: Why BPEL ?
• BPEL processes are off-the-shelf entities, BPMN is more
documentation related
- transition often broken, not symmetric
• Ideologically, antipatterns in BPMN and BPEL processes represents
same semantics, but some syntactic differences exist
• Antipatterns in models (BPMN) already got much attention
in the literature:
- target audience: business analysts
• Conceptual mismatch between BPMN and BPEL
- differ in control flow support, e.g., loops, splits, joins, etc.
• Transformation errors and early design errors:
- translation, adaptation, and–or implementation errors
- errors by business analysts
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
Outline
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Related Work (1/2)
Model Antipatterns:
- Onoda et al. (1999): catalog of 5 deadlock patterns
- Persson et al. (2006) and Stirna et al. (2009): 6 process patterns
and 13 process antipatterns
- Koehler and Vanhatalo (2007): 14 structural antipatterns in process models
- Trcka et al. (2009): formalized 9 process antipatterns using temporal logic
Detection of Model Antipatterns:
- Gruhn and Laue (2010): heuristic-based approach for discovering
problems in BPMs
- Laue and Awad (2010): visually represented process antipatterns
Process Patterns:
- Wohed et al. (2002): analysed BPEL4WS based on workflow and
communication patterns
- Aalst et al. (2003): discussed 26 control flow, branching-synchronization,
and structural patterns
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Related Work (2/2)
Identified gaps from the literature:
- Antipatterns and detection approaches were considered
only for BPMN models
- No other formal specifications for process antipatterns
except the one by Trcka et al. (2009)
- Various quality aspects (e.g., availability or response time
of Web services) were not considered
- No automatic detection approach for BPEL process
antipatterns until now
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
Outline
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Solution towards detection
• We propose to:
- specify process antipatterns using classical Rules of
Inference
- define a concrete approach
• We perform a small detection experiment
- seven antipatterns, three example BPEL processes
- show results for two antipatterns
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Approach (1/5)
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Approach (2/5): Specify Rules
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
Start
(A,B)
D (A,B,C)
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Approach (3/5): Process Transform
• Process transformation (more abstract and simplified)
(a) from the original BPEL to a simplified BPEL
(b) from the simplified BPEL to a generic model
• Goal of this transformation is to ease:
- implementation of the rules
- further analysis of the processes
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Approach (4/5): Process Transform
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
(a)
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Approach (4/5): Process Transform
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
(a)
(b)
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Approach (5/5): Detection
• The implementation of rules
• Applying implemented algorithms on transformed models
• Detection is now semi-automatic
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
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Experiments (1/5): Objects
travelProcess auctionProcess salesProcess
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
3 Web services
7 I/O Var
3 Web services
6 I/O Var
2 Web services
4 I/O Var
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Experiments (2/5): Subjects
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Experiments (3/5): Results
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
no detection
no detection
N/A
N/A
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Experiments (3/5): Results
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
no detection
no detection
N/A
N/A
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Experiments (4/5): Results (cont.)
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Experiments (4/5): Results (cont.)
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
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Experiments (5/5): Threats to Validity
External validity: Possibility to generalize the
results for other large and realistic business processes
Construct validity: Different engineers might define
rules differently
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective
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Future work
• Perform experiments on other large and complex
business processes
- Limitation: availability of business processes
• Automate the approach
• Detect more process antipatterns
• Analyse the processes dynamically
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Experiments (4/5): Results (cont.)
salesProcess travelProcess
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Palma et al. | Detection of Process Antipatterns: An BPEL Perspective