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

High-level Choreographies

In the design of high-level choreographies, a structural, role-based view and a
behavioural milestone view can be distinguished. Let’s Dance supports both
views. At the centre of attention are roles that describe the participants of a
process choreography; these roles are depicted as boxes. Typically, there is
at most one participant per role involved in a choreography. If potentially
multiple organizations of the same role participate, overlaid boxes are used to
represent such multiplicity, as shown for role B . Channels represent interaction dependencies between roles; they are depicted
as small circles on lines connecting the roles. In the figure, a channel
between roles A and B is shown. The meaning of such a channel is that participants
of roles that are connected through channels might interact. If on the other hand there is no channel between roles, then the participants cannot
interact • Part-of Relationship: One role is part of the other role. In this case, a
participant of the subrole is part of the participant of the super-role.
For instance, a car manufacturing company can be decomposed into a
number of production sites, warehouses, and management facilities. In
terms of interaction behaviour, interaction models assigned to the superrole
are assigned to one or several of the subroles in a refinement step. For
instance, a second company interacting with the car manufacturer might
in fact only be able to interact with the management division of the car
manufacturer.
• Specialization: A subrole can also be a specialization of the super-role. The
subroles therefore inherit the interaction behaviour of the super-role. If an
interaction is possible with a participant of the super-role, then such an
interaction must also be possible with the participants of all subroles.
As an example of role specialization, consider a super-role “Carrier” and
its specializations “Land Carrier” and “Air Carrier.”
Channels can be refined into message links. While channels are not directed,
message links are directed, because they describe the flow of a message
from a sender to a receiver. Message names need to be specified for every link,
A channel can be used to represent that a seller interacts with an auctioning
service. Different message links could then refine this channel. In this way,
it could be specified that an auction creation request link from the seller to the
auctioning service is available, as is a creation confirmation link in opposite
direction. The three roles Seller, Bidder, and Auctioning Service are interconnected
through channels. Furthermore, at most one seller, at most one auctioning
service, and potentially many bidders participate in a choreography instance Milestones represent goals and subgoals to be reached during the choreography,
and at the same time serve as synchronization points in the choreography.
Milestones in Let’s Dance are depicted by filled diamonds. For each
milestone, it can be specified which participants should be synchronized when
the milestone is reached.
Different control flow constructs are available to represent the dependencies
between milestones. At this point, we will only explain the semantics of
precedes relationships. The other relationship types will be introduced shortly.
If a milestone m1 precedes a milestone m2, then m1 has to be reached before
m2 can be reached. However, there is no guarantee that m2 will eventually be
reached once m1 has been reached.