Emphasizing events and rules in business processes

In the domain of Process-Aware Information Systems, business processes. events, rules and information models appear intertwined and this calls for a representation that integrates different viewpoints. A motivating example is the mapping of several customer orders to one bulk supplier order: a distributor may wait until the number of items needed by customers entitles them to take advantage of a quantity discount. The individual events representing the incoming customer orders need to be mapped to complex events that trigger the submissions of supplier orders. Complex events are defined through rules that must be able to access the properties of the events involved; rules then need an information model providing the relevant information at an adequate abstraction level. This paper presents a notation, called Chant, which consists of three interrelated models, i.e. the process model, the information model and the rule model. Processes imply choices, which can be classified into a number of selection patterns. Two major categories are addressed in this paper: they are referred to as data selection patterns and path selection patterns.