Business Process Management (Part-2 Business Process Modelling[Chapter V Process Choreographies ] ) Sec M -- By Mathias Weske

Basic Control Flow Relating Interactions

As seen in the milestone example, a precedes relationship between two
interactions means that an instance of the target interaction can occur only
if the instance of the source interaction has already occurred. If in a logistics
environment a delivery acknowledgment message should be sent only after a
delivery notification has been received, a precedes relationship between the
respective elementary interactions can be used to represent this business rule.
An inhibits relationship indicates that an instance of the target interaction
can occur only if no instance of the source interaction has occurred yet. In
an example involving an order process, an invoice should not be sent after an
order cancellation by the buyer has been received.
Also, scenarios where two interactions inhibit each other, i.e., an instance
where either one or the other interaction can complete, are very common.
Consider, for instance, a travel agency that either receives a confirmation
message from the customer or a cancellation message from the airline. To
cater to these situations, a specific notational element for vice-versa-inhibits
is introduced.
A weak precedes relationship means that an instance of the target interaction
can occur only after the instance of the source interaction has already
completed or was skipped. Imagine a project management scenario where the
project leader expects status updates from a subcontractor that are merged
into a status report for the employer. However, in special cases the project
leader and the subcontractors can agree that no status update is needed.
Interaction
instances can be in the states initialized, enabled, completed, and skipped. An
interaction instance becomes skipped if any of the inhibiting instances has
completed.
An interaction instance becomes enabled if there are no precedes or weak
precedes relationships targeting the corresponding interaction or all preceding
instances are completed and all weakly preceding instances have been
completed or were skipped.
An instance must execute, i.e., the actual message exchange occurs, only
if it is enabled. After the message exchange, the instance is in the completed
state
The conversation starts with the Seller sending an Auction creation request
message to the Auctioning service. The precedes relationship defines that, if
this message arrived, an Account creation request message can be sent to the
Seller. Then, the Seller sends a Registration info message to the Auctioning
service, which responds with an Registration confirmation message.
The weak precedes relationship connecting the last elementary interactions
defines that the Auctioning service can send an Auction creation confirmation
to the Seller if it has either sent a Registration confirmation message before or if the sending of that message was skipped. The latter is used to cater to
situations in which a Seller is already registered at the Auctioning service.