A search-tree-based abstraction method for business process Petri nets models
FANG Huan
HE Lu-lu
FANG Xian-wen
WANG Li-li
Abstract：As it is difficult to form a quick overview understanding for large and complex business process models,so the studies about the technologies and methods of model abstraction and simplification are crucial.The related researches in existence have some limitations,such as only the control flows of the model are taken into account,whereas the interactive behavioral semantics are mostly neglected,and have little vague about the scopes orientation that to be abstracted in the model. A search-tree-based abstraction method for business process model is purposed in the paper,which is founded on the basis of behavioral relation theory of Petri nets and the Depth-First Search ideas. Firstly,the concepts of three kinds of block structures and boundary places in work-flow Petri nets are formalized,and the transitions association tree of the system is then obtained. The transition association tree is further used to identify and locate the areas that to be abstracted in the model,and the aim of model abstraction is then accomplished. Finally,a case example is applied to illustrate the validity and feasibility of the proposed method. Therefore,compared to the existing work,our main contributions can be stated as follows: we purpose a block based abstraction method and its corresponding block identification method,where the interactive semantics and control dependencies are both taken into consideration, and the purposed methods are in polynomial time complexity.
Keywords：depth first searchtransition association search treeabstract simplificationbehavioral profilePetri nets
Publication Date：2018-01-01
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：11( 92-102 )