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  1. OMG Issue

BPMN11 — BPMN spec not clear on separation of data/display regarding pools and lanes

  • Key: BPMN11-65
  • Legacy Issue Number: 10350
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: CA Technologies ( Donna Burbank)
  • Summary:

    The BPMN specification is not clear on the separation of data and display regarding pools and lanes. In some cases, pools and lanes seem to only be visual containers that are portrayed on diagrams. In other cases (e.g. in property definitions), pools and lanes seem to a part of the actual BPMN data/metadata.

    Consider the following use case:

    I create a new business process diagram
    Within this diagram, I create a pool with two lanes
    Within the lanes, I create a sequence of flow objects which collectively create a BP Process (that could be executed).

    In the case above, the diagram will reference the pool. The pool will both define the process and reference the lanes within the pool.

    The following questions emerge:

    1. Can the BP process itself be referenced (i.e. displayed) in more than one business process diagram, either as a new unique pool or an independent sub-process inside another process? Or does a BP process have only one diagram (or set of diagrams if using off-page connectors) associated with it.

    2. Consider the case of storing BPMN metadata without diagram representation. In data, is a pool and/or lane considered to be the owner to the BP process inside the pool / lane, or is just a visual attribute of the process? It seems if you have a BP Process (that contains flow objects), you would be able to portray this same process in two BPMD diagrams 1) a pool/lane showing the flow objects in the process 2) an independent sub-process showing flow objects in the process.

    3. Is there ever a case where BP process is considered to be the owner of the pool? That is, a process contains more than one pool. From the spec, it appears that a pool can define only one process, and a process cannot own one or more pools.

  • Reported: BPMN 1.0b1 — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 04:00 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — BPMN 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    see above

  • Updated: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 20:57 GMT