This page offers an overview of the tools for process configuration that have been developed during the course of this research. The tools can be downloaded from here.
Synergia - the questionnaire toolset
Synergia assists domain experts and process modelers in creating questionnaire models, in mapping questionnaires to process models, in answering questionnaires and in committing the result of a questionnaire onto a process model for the configuration of the latter. The purpose of the toolset is therefore to foster synergism between domain models and process models via the use of questionnaires. Subject-matter experts can configure reference process models by answering interactive questionnaires. Questions are expressed in natural language and relate to the variability of a given domain. The answers to a questionnaire are collected and used to automatically generate and individualized version of the configurable reference process model. Questionnaires are captured in questionnaire models. These are constructed by modelers with the input from domain experts. Modelers also take care of constructing the configurable reference process model and to link it to the questionnaire model.
From a software perspective, each component of the toolset is a stand-alone rich client application responsible for a specific task in the configuration process. The following picture provides an overview of the software architecture.
Quaestio is an interactive questionnaire tool, suitable for domain experts to configure the features of a given domain. The tool accepts an XML serialization (.qml) of a questionnaire model and generates a questionnaire that guides the configuration of the domain interactively. Questions are posed only if they are relevant, in an order consistent with the order dependencies defined in the model. Moreover, the tool prevents users from entering conflicting answers to subsequent questions, by dynamically checking the constraints on the answers. Questions can be answered explicitly or by using the default values, and they can be rolled back if a decision needs to be reconsidered. Quaestio embodies a SAT solver based on Shared Binary Decision Diagrams (SBDDs), to handle the constraints dynamically. The answers given to a questionnaire can be exported as a configuration model (.cml).
Process Configurator allows users to configure a configurable reference process model according to the answers of a questionnaire. It accepts a domain configuration generated by Quaestio, a serialization of a configurable process model and the mapping between the latter and the questionnaire model which the configuration belongs to. It assigns each variation point in the configurable process model a variant among the possible ones, according to the decisions taken in the configuration model. The output is an intermediate format representing the configured process model. The tool currently supports reference process models defined in the C-EPC (.epml) and C-YAWL (.xml) languages. Future support will be added for C-iEPC - the extension of C-EPC to capture variations in the resources and business objects participating in a process.
Process Individualizer implements an algorithm to generate an individualized process model from a configured reference process model, by transforming each variation point to the variant it is assigned to, and removing those process fragments that are no longer required. In doing so, the algorithm preservers the syntactic correctness of the configured reference process model. In other words, the individualized process model is well-formed provided the input model is so. The tool currently generates EPC models from configured C-EPC models, and YAWL models from configured C-YAWL models.
Questionnaire Designer is a pluggable rich client platform allowing modelers to visually create questionnaire models (.qml) which can be later inported into Quaestio. A diagram file (.qml_diagram) is created for each questionnaire model and synchronized with the latter. All the features of a questionnaire model can be specified. The tool also permits users to validate their models to spot undersired circular dependencies among facts or questions.
The Mapper tool (under development) allows modelers to define valid mappings (.cmap) between questionnaire models and configurable process models.