On the Semantics of EPCs - Efficient Calculation and Simulation

Recently, we have defined a formal semantics of Event driven Process Chains (EPCs) that, for the first time, faithfully captures the non-local behaviour of the XOR- and OR-join connectors. This fixed- point characterisation of the semantics of EPCs, however, does not pro- vide an efficient algorithm for calculating the semantics of an EPC and for simulating it. In this paper, we will show how to calculate this semantics of an EPC in an efficient way by employing Kleene's fixed-point theorem and dif- ferent techniques from symbolic model checking. These algorithms have been implemented in an open source tool for simulating and analysing EPCs: EPC Tools.