Process programming with active and passive components

Abstract

Software process programming languages, i.e., languages designed to support the development of executable software process models, represent a recent and rapidly growing research topic in software engineering. Process programming environments and process run time environments are also on the research agenda, as large CASE workbenches have to be controlled and even driven in a project specific fashion by process programs to be written and executed in an appropriate environment. A certain need for specialized process programming languages emerges from the fact that software process programs have to be based on very heterogeneous modeling constructs. In particular, each process program is defined upon distinct object categories like projects, persons, equipment or documents, it contains different control constructs like place transition nets, first order predicates, predicates stated in temporal or fuzzy logic calculi and it has to allow for different initiative policies like program controlled policies, program driven policies or mixtures of both.

The PROMOLA process programming language, as proposed in this paper, supports a place transition net used for object behavior modeling together with entity-relationship based data modeling constructs. Active event propagation is supported by trigger specifications which allow for complex activity threads. The process programming environment shares meta-data with the run time environment. In particular, all process program information is stored in a repository by the process programming environment components and subsequently used as decision meta-data by the run time environment.