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Woped - A "Proof-Of-Concept" Platform For Experimental BPM Research Projects

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WoPeD - A "Proof-of-Concept" Platform for Experimental BPM Research Projects

Freytag, Thomas ; Allgaier, Philip; Burattin, Andrea; Danek-Bulius, Andreas

Published in:
Online Proceedings of the BPM Demo Track 2017

Publication date:
2017

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Citation (APA):
Freytag, T., Allgaier, P., Burattin, A., & Danek-Bulius, A. (2017). WoPeD - A "Proof-of-Concept" Platform for
Experimental BPM Research Projects. In Online Proceedings of the BPM Demo Track 2017

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WoPeD - A “Proof-of-Concept” Platform for
Experimental BPM Research Projects
Thomas Freytag, Cooperative State University (DHBW) Karlsruhe, Germany
[email protected]
Philip Allgaier, bpcompass GmbH, Karlsruhe and Hamburg, Germany
[email protected]
Andrea Burattin, University of Innsbruck
[email protected]
Andreas Danek-Bulius, University of Innsbruck
[email protected]

Abstract. WoPeD (Workflow Petrinet Designer) is an open-source,


Java-based software product supporting the creation, simulation and
analysis of business process models. Over the years, WoPeD has become
a widely-used tool in the academic sector, primarily known and used for
teaching purposes. To some extent WoPeD is also playing a second role
by serving as an experimental software platform for implementing and
validating research ideas from various BPM fields. This demo gives an
overview over the features which have been added to WoPeD following
this “proof-of-concept” research approach.1

Keywords: Petri net tool, open-source, teaching and e-learning tool,


experimental research implementation platform.

1 Introduction
WoPeD has been extended continuously resulting in the current release 3.6.0
from June 2017. WoPeD covers a variety of BPM aspects. Firstly, it provides
a graphical editor for workflow nets and enterprise resources. Secondly, it sup-
ports model-based simulation, analysis, verification and property visualization
by providing built-in algorithms for soundness, coverability graph construction,
quantitative simulation and more. Thirdly, it allows the transformation from
and to other common process model formats like BPMN or EPCs via APro-
MoRe repositories [1]. WoPeD has proved to be an easy-to-use sofware tool
allowing students and practitioners hands-on experience and fast acquisition of
fundamental concepts of Petri nets in general and BPM in particular. In the
past, WoPeD has served researchers in the BPM community as a software plat-
form for the implementation of innovative project ideas. The remainder of this
paper gives an overview over example projects. Some of them have been success-
fully completed and presented on past BPM conferences (section 2, [3]). Other
projects refer to recently improved features (section 3) or brand new extensions
(sections 4 and 5).
1
Copyright © 2017 for this paper by its authors. Copying permitted for private and
academic purposes.
2 Operator Syntax Coloring and Process Metrics
In cooperation with researchers from TU Eindhoven, an operator coloring func-
tion has been added to the WoPeD editor following the principle of syntax high-
lighting of programming languages. The corresponding sets of opening (“split”)
and closing (“join”) operators are highlighted in the same color - also interac-
tively during editing of the model. The research hypothesis stated that operator
coloring will lead to a better understanding of control flow and has a positive
impact on the error rate of the resulting process model. The evidence was de-
rived from a field study with a test user group making use of this new function.
The results were published in [9].

Fig. 1. Operator coloring and process metrics sidebar

In a second project with researchers from WU Vienna, a component was


developed and embedded into the WoPeD editor to compute, visualize and rate
process metric values. A large set of predefined metrics, like simple counts (e.g.
number of tasks), analytical counts (e.g. graph diameter) or relational properties
(e.g. degree of structuredness) are computed by built-in algorithms (making use
of the BPStruct library developed at HPI Potsdam [2]) and displayed in an editor
sidebar. Additionally, new metric algorithms can be created via an interactive
formula editor. The implemented functions were used to validate the hypothesis
that certain metric values allow the prediction of certain error types in process
models. The results were published in [6]. Figure 1 shows an example WoPeD
session with enabled operator coloring and the computation of all predefined
process metrics opened in the sidebar.

3 Redesigned AProMoRe Interface


AProMoRe is an open source software maintained at QUT Brisbane [1]. It pro-
vides a server-based process model repository and a set of conversion algorithms
that allow model interchange between the most common process modeling lan-
guages like BPMN, EPML and YAWL.

Fig. 2. AProMoRe settings and import dialog

There is a recently improved interface in WoPeD for importing and exporting


process models from and to AProMoRe servers in any supported modeling lan-
guage. This allows applying WoPeD’s built-in analysis, simulation and visualiza-
tion functions also to models created in non-Petrinet-based languages. Figure 2
shows the redesigned AProMoRe import dialog. WoPeD is an associated partner
of the AProMoRe project. There is an ongoing collaboration between developers
from both tools with the goal to further improve the bidirectional conversion be-
tween AProMoRe’s “Canonical Process Format” (CPF) and PNML, the common
Petri net file format used by WoPeD.

4 Interactive Coverability Graph Construction

In cooperation with University of Innsbruck, a wizard has been included into


WoPeD which guides the user step by step through the construction of the
minimal coverability graph of the modeled process. This feature extends the
educational usage of WoPeD as a learning tool for Petri nets. The wizard uses
the Monotone Pruning Algorithm introduced in [8], which is based on the well-
known Karp&Miller Algorithm [5]. The Monotone Pruning Algorithm applies
sophisticated optimization during the graph construction, which significantly
reduces the computing power required. In addition, the algorithm computes
the unique minimal coverability graph, which can be used for further analysis.
Figure 3 shows a screenshot of the construction of the coverability graph of the
demonstration model taken from [5] where the node highlighted in blue has just
been analyzed in this step.

Fig. 3. Process2Text sidebar

5 Process2Text and Text2Process Interface

Another cooperation project was performed recently with VU Amsterdam, re-


sulting in the development of a WoPeD interface to a webservice delivering a
textual representation of the model shown in the WoPeD editor (“Process2Text”).
The underlying techniques from linguistics and graph decomposition allow
the synthesis of accurate natural language text like from process handbooks [7].
Figure 4 shows a screenshot of WoPeD with a “Process2Text sidebar” contain-
ing the generated text. The highlighted text regions represent hyperlinks to the
associated elements in the process graph. A new feature currently under ad-
vanced development (expected to be published soon) allows the construction of
a process model from a given natural language description (“Text2Process”). The
implemenation makes use of the ideas and algorithms published in [4].
Fig. 4. Process2Text sidebar

6 Conclusion and further readings


WoPeD can be downloaded via its homepage [10] or directly from Sourceforge.
The code is open source and is published under the LGPL license. A screencast
of the features described in this demo session paper can be found at [11].

References
[1] AProMoRe website: www.apromore.org, accessed June 2017.
[2] BPStruct. bpt.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/Public/BPStruct, accessed June 2017.
[3] T. Freytag, M. Sänger: WoPeD - An Educational Tool for Workflow Nets. BPM
demo session 2014. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1295/paper3.pdf.
[4] F. Friedrich, J. Mendling, F. Puhlmann. Process Model Generation from Natural
Language Text. In: Mouratidis H., Rolland C. (eds) Advanced Information Systems
Engineering. CAiSE 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6741, Springer,
Berlin, Heidelberg 2011.
[5] R. Karp, E. Miller: Parallel Program Schemata. In: Journal of Computer and
System Sciences, 3:2, pp. 147-195, 1969.
[6] J. Mendling: Metrics for Process Models, Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2008.
[7] M. Meitz, H. Leopold, J. Mendling: An Approach to Support Process Model Vali-
dation based on Text Generation. EMISA Forum 33(2): 7-20, 2013.
[8] P.-A. Reynier, F. Servais: Minimal Coverability Set for Petri Nets: Karp and Miller
Algorithm with Pruning. In: Applications and Theory of Petri Nets: 32nd Interna-
tional Conference, Newcastle, UK, 2011.
[9] H. A. Reijers, T. Freytag, J. Mendling, A. Eckleder: Syntax highlighting in business
process models. Decision Support Systems 51(3): 339-349 (2011).
[10] WoPeD website: www.woped.org, accessed June 2017.
[11] WoPeD demo screencast video: www.woped.org/screencast-bpm2017.mp4, ac-
cessed June 2017.

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