62 Int. J. Business Process Integration and Management, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2020
Copyright © 2020 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
A context-based approach for modelling and
querying versions of BPMN processes
Mohamed Amine Chaâbane*, Imen Ben Said,
Fatma Ellouze and Rafik Bouaziz
MIRACL,
Université de Sfax,
Route de l’aéroport, BP 1088, 3018, Sfax, Tunisia
Email: mohamedamine.chaabane@isaas.usf.tn
Email: Imen.bensaid@fsegs.usf.tn
Email: fatma.ellouze@enis.usf.tn
Email: rafik.bouaziz@usf.tn
*Corresponding author
Eric Andonoff
IRIT,
Université Toulouse 1 – Capitole,
2 rue du Doyen Gabriel Marty,
31042, Toulouse Cedex, France
Email: andonoff@univ-tlse1.fr
Abstract: Versioning is an interesting solution to deal with business process flexibility.
It consists of the definition of several process versions for taking into account the significant
changes occurring to the processes. It allows the running of several instances of the same process
according to different models. However, in a multi-version environment, where numerous
versions co-exist, it is important to specify the context in which these versions can be used. The
context is used in particular to find out, for a given situation, the appropriate process version to
be executed at run-time. We aim in this paper at offering a solution to model the context of
versions of intra- and inter-organisational processes and query these versions using their context.
More precisely the recommended solution extends BPMN2.0, the de-facto standard for process
modelling, to consider versions and contexts, and introduces a context based language for
versions querying.
Keywords: business process flexibilty; modelling versions; BPMN private processes;
BPMN collaborations; BPMN for versions.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Chaâbane, M.A., Said, I.B., Ellouze, F.,
Bouaziz, R. and Andonoff, E. (2020) ‘A context-based approach for modelling and querying
versions of BPMN processes’, Int. J. Business Process Integration and Management, Vol. 10,
No. 1, pp.62–86.
Biographical notes: Mohamed Amine Chaâbane received his PhD from the University of
Toulouse, France in 2012. He is an Associate Professor at the Higher Institute of Business
Administration, University of Sfax, Tunisia. Since 2017, he was the Head of the Computer
Science and Quantitative Methods Department. He is also a Member of the Multimedia,
InfoRmation Systems and Advanced Computing Laboratory (MIRACL). His research interests
focus on business process management field. He is working on topics related to business process
modelling, process flexibility, context of process and self-adaptation of process.
Imen Ben Said received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Sfax and
University of Toulouse 1 Capitole in 2017. Since 2009, she was a teacher/researcher at the
Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Sfax. She is a Member of the MIRACL
Laboratory. Her research concerns are information systems modelling and business process
management (BPM). Currently, her works are directed towards the flexibility of business
processes using the version notion.
Fatma Ellouze is currently a contractual assistant in the Department of Computer-science,
National Engineering School, University of Sfax, Tunisia. She received her PhD in Computer
Science from the Faculty of Economics and Management of the University of Sfax, Tunisia,