BPMN21 — Initializing and updating properties is not straight-forward

From examples meeting on 2009.03.26:

When creating the looping example for <a href="http://www.osoa.org/jira/browse/BPMN-281" title="V0.5.6: Section 10.3 Data [Data]: Assignments not defined"><strike>BPMN-281</strike></a>, it is not obvious how to initialize properties. Also, updating a property via a dataInputAssociation or dataOutputAssociation is unnecessarily complicated because sourceRef and targetRef are currently mandatory elements, but not really applicable for properties.

Proposal:
(1) Introduce a new entity "initializationAssignment" (or better name) as a contained element for property (and data object for symmetry reasons), which has the same structure as assignment, but with an optional "to" element.
(2) Make dataInputAssociation::sourceRef and ::targetRef optional, likewise dataOutputAssociation::sourceRef and ::targetRef.

Comments:
From: trickovic created: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 04:00:15 -0500 (CDT)
As per 4/6 BPMN 2.0 meeting: Defer <a href="http://www.osoa.org/jira/browse/BPMN-471" title="Initializing and updating properties is not straight-forward">BPMN-471</a>.