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  1. OMG Issue

BPMN21 — Clarification needed regarding converging exclusive gateway and slash marker

  • Key: BPMN21-398
  • Status: open  
  • Source: Munkert Software Consulting ( Frank Munkert)
  • Summary:

    On page 290, in section "10.6.2 Exclusive Gateway", there is the following text:
    "A converging Exclusive Gateway is used to merge alternative paths. Each incoming Sequence Flow token is routed
    to the outgoing Sequence Flow without synchronization."

    On page 435, in section "13.4.2 Exclusive Gateway (Exclusive Decision (data-based) and Exclusive Merge)", there is the following text in the table:
    "Exception Issues - The exclusive gateway throws an exception in case all conditions evaluate to false and a default flow has not been specified."

    I.e. according to the table, in order not to throw an exception, a converging exclusive gateway would need to have a default flow marker on its single outgoing sequence flow. This seems to be a contradiction to the description in section 10.6.2. Therefore, this should be clarified in both sections, e.g. using a sentence like this: "The single outgoing sequence flow of a merging exclusive gateway is implicitly assumed to be the default sequence flow. A slash marker MAY be shown in diagrams for such sequence flows."

    Without such a clarification, BPMN process diagrams where an outgoing sequence flow of a converging exclusive gateway has no slash marker would be wrong. Since those diagrams are very common (e.g. OMG's "BPMN 2.0 by Example", v1.0, page 36), it should be explicitly mentioned that omitting the slash marker is allowed.

  • Reported: BPMN 2.0.2 — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 06:35 GMT
  • Updated: Fri, 19 Aug 2016 13:25 GMT