Querying business processes with BP-QL

Catriel Beeri, Anat Eyal*, Simon Kamenkovich, Tova Milo

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

79 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present in this paper BP-QL, a novel query language for querying business processes. The BP-QL language is based on an intuitive model of business processes, an abstraction of the emerging BPEL (business process execution language) standard. It allows users to query business processes visually, in a manner very analogous to how such processes are typically specified, and can be employed in a distributed setting, where process components may be provided by distinct providers. We describe here the query language as well as its underlying formal model. We consider the properties of the various language components and explain how they influenced the language design. In particular we distinguish features that can be efficiently supported, and those that incur a prohibitively high cost, or cannot be computed at all. We also present our implementation which complies with real life standards for business process specifications, XML, and Web services, and is used in the BP-QL system.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)477-507
Number of pages31
JournalInformation Systems
Volume33
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2008

Keywords

  • BPEL
  • Business processes
  • Distributed query processing
  • Query language
  • XML

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