Detecting deadlock and multiple termination in BPMN model using process automata

Abstract

The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) has been widely used as a tool for business process modeling. Despite of its popular, the BPMN does not contain a precise semantics. The incompatible constructs can cause the behavioral error such as deadlock. This paper proposed an automata-based formalism for verification of the single source BPMN model. We first introduce the transformation of the BPMN model to the process automata. Then, we verify the compatibility of the transition function. The BPMN model is considered to be correct if there exists at least one process sequence that is accepted by the process automata. Deadlock and multiple termination problems are chosen to illustrate our approach. The experimental results show that we can detect both problems (if any).