Towards a reference implementation for Data Centric Dynamic Systems

Data- and artifact-centric business processes are gaining momentum due to their ability of explicitly capturing the interplay between the process control-flow and the manipulated data. In this paper, we rely on the framework of Data-Centric Dynamic Systems (DCDSs), which has been recently introduced for the formal specification and verification of data-centric processes, showing how it can be lifted towards run-time execution support. In particular, we focus on the problem of database update as induced by the action execution, introducing a set of patterns that allow for an incremental management of the update. At the same time, we discuss the natural correspondence between DCDSs and state-of-the-art rule engines, e.g., JBoss Drools, which paves the way towards a reference implementation for data- and artifact-centric processes, where the model used for analysis and verification is fully aligned with the one adopted for the execution. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.