For process modeling, AristaFlow provides an intuitive graphical editor. It applies a correctness by construction principle by providing at any time only those operations to the process implementer which allow to transform a structurally correct process schema into another one. Operations are enabled or disabled according to which
region in the process graph is marked for applying an operation. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate this relationship:

In Fig. 1a no nodes are marked. As a result, all operations in Fig. 2a are disabled, except Insert Data Element (which is not visible here). In Fig. 1b only activity “Order-Proc” is marked and, therefore, those operations are enabled (cf. Fig. 2b) whose effects comply with this selection (e.g., to insert a surrounding AND block, a surrounding XOR block, a surrounding loop block, or to delete the selected activity). In addition, Insert Data Element (which is always applicable) is selectable again. In Fig. 1c two adjacent nodes are marked. The green color  indicates “begin of marked area” and the blue one indicates “end of marked area”. Again, those operations are enabled whose effect is precisely defined by such kind of marking (cf. Fig. 2c): In
addition to the operations of the previous scenario, also the “in between” variants of the insertions are now enabled as well as the operation Insert Node. Finally, regarding the marking from Fig. 1d, at first glance, it might be astonishing that only the operations depicted in Fig. 2d (plus Insert Data Element) are enabled. However, only for these operations the effect is precisely defined for the given markings.

 

	a)
	b)
	c)

Fig. 1: Markings in the process graph

 

a)		b)		c)

Fig. 2: Enabled change operations

Deficiencies not prohibited by this approach (e.g., concerning data flow) are checked on-the-fly and are reported
continuously in the problem window of the Process Template Editor (cf. Fig. 3).
 

 

Fig. 3: Reporting of detected deficiencies