BPMN2 — Exporter Information Required for BPMN 2 files

There is a requirement for the “Exporter” of a BPMN 2 file to be identified. Such identification will allow an importing tool to take various appropriate actions to ensure ease of exchange and interchange of BPMN 2 files (for both semantic and diagrams).

There is substantial practical evidence of the benefits of such information. In fact XMI provides support for such information. You can refer to MOF 2.0/XMI Mapping Specification, v2.1.1, section 4.5.2 and section 4.5. in the XMI spec for description of the <documentation> class, which is part of the XMI model. It contains the nested element <exporter>, and <exporterVersion> which serves this purpose.

The intention is that any model that is an instance of MOF and serialized in XMI is able to include an instance of <documentation> nested in the root. As the example given by Pete shows:

More specifically there is the following in the XMI spec :

<xsd:complexType name="Documentation">

<xsd:element name="exporter" type="xsd:string"/>

<xsd:element name="exporterVersion" type="xsd:string"/>

For example:

<xmi:XMI>

<documentation xmi:type=xmi:Documentation>

<exporter>MagicDraw UML</exporter>

<exporterVersion>16.8 Beta</exporterVersion>

</documentation>

This would require changes to section 8.1 and 8.1.3 of the BPMN 2 spec

Proposal:

Add to the tDefinitions xsd complexType:

<xsd:attribute name="exporter" type="xsd:string" />

<xsd:attribute name="exporterVersion" type="xsd:string"/>

This will give two new optional properties (exporter and exporterVersion).

(a) Add to the tDefinitions xsd complexType:
"<xsd:attribute name="exporter" type="xsd:string" />
<xsd:attribute name="exporterVersion" type="xsd:string"/>"
(b) Update Figure 8.4, Figure 8.5, and Figure 8.6 to reflect this change
(c) Update Table 8.1 and Table 8.3 to include these attributes
Disposition: Resolved