Toward configurable modeling for artifact-centric business processes

There are usually process model variants for a business as its application and evolution. Configurable process modeling is an effective approach for the design and development of business process models by reuse. However, the existing configurable process modeling approaches focus on traditional activity-centric business processes, which is unfeasible for the new modeling paradigm of artifact-centric business processes. To solve the problem, we propose a configurable modeling framework, especially for artifact-centric business processes. To derive the integrated model for multiple process model variants, we propose a merger operation for artifact-centric process model variants. We get a configurable artifact-centric process model by identifying configurable points in the integrated model by common and variable characteristics. Moreover, the associated configuration alternatives are set accordingly for configurable points, in which the property of data privacy is considered. New artifact-centric process models can be derived by configuration based on the behavior of a configurable model. To facilitate the process configuration, guidelines are analyzed based on the notion of process element relation graph. A case study is conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of our approach with a real-world business process developed for Real Estate Administration (REA) in Hangzhou, China.