Modeling and prototyping business processes in AutoPA

We have seen growing interest in validation of a business process model before it is implemented due to the complexity to model business process. In this paper, we propose a method for analyzing and validating the functional correctness of a business process model. Based on our previous work, we model a business process in UML activity diagrams with OCL constraints, then we give a formal semantics of the business process model, finally we validate the model by prototyping. We have developed a tool - AutoPA to support our method. When applying the tool, a business process model specified by UML activity diagrams with OCL constraints is transformed into an executable prototype in Java. Both the control flow dimension and the dataflow dimension of the model are considered. With the prototype, users can validate the functional properties of the business process model in an interactive way. We use a real-world example as a case study: the business process of the first delivery of mortgage archive in a risk mitigation system of a bank.