Soundness of Data-Aware Processes with Arithmetic Conditions

Abstract

. Data-aware processes represent and integrate structural and behavioural constraints in a single model, and are thus increasingly inves-tigated in business process management and information systems engineering. In this spectrum, Data Petri nets (DPNs) have gained increasing popularity thanks to their ability to balance simplicity with expressive-ness. The interplay of data and control-flow makes checking the correctness of such models, specifically the well-known property of soundness, crucial and challenging. A major shortcoming of previous approaches for checking soundness of DPNs is that they consider data conditions without arithmetic, an essential feature when dealing with real-world, concrete applications. In this paper, we attack this open problem by providing a foundational and operational framework for assessing soundness of DPNs enriched with arithmetic data conditions. The framework comes with a proof-of-concept implementation that, instead of relying on ad-hoc techniques, employs off-the-shelf established SMT technologies. The implementation is validated on a collection of examples from the literature, and on synthetic variants constructed from such examples.