Time Pattern TP9: Cyclic Elements
Regarding iteratively performed activities or process fragments it may become necessary to restrict time lags between two activity instances belonging to different iterations of a loop structure.
This may be either instances of the same activity or instances of two different activities belonging to the same loop structure.
| C | Cyclic Elements only constrain the execution of activities | |
| a | Single activity (including multi-instance activities) | |
| D | There are three kinds of restrictions | |
| a | Minimum value | |
| b | Maximum value | |
| c | Time interval [min … max] | |
| E | Cyclic Elements define the distance between the | |
| a | start of two activities (i.e., Start-Start relation) | |
| b | start of the first and the completion of the second activity (i.e., Start-End) | |
| c | completion of the first and the start of the second activity (i.e., End-Start) | |
| d | completion of two activities (i.e., End-End) | |
| K | Cyclic element may restrict the time lag between | |
| a | two directly succeeding iterations | |
| b | two subsequent activity instances belonging to arbitrary iterations | |
| L | Time lag between cycles | |
| a | is fixed | |
| b | may vary between iterations | |
A special time constraint is introduced between the start / end events of the activities where the respective event of the second activity is considered to be in a succeeding iteration of the event referring to the first activity.
- Administer 50 to 75 mg in equally divided doses every 12 hrs for 5 subsequent days (Design Choices D[c] E[c] K[a] L[a]).
- Maintenance aircraft “C Checks” are performed every 12-18 months (Design Choices D[c] E[c] K[b] L[a])
- Cycle Time for maintenance aircraft “C Checks” is at least 2 weeks (Design Choices D[a] E[a] K[a] L[a])
TP1 – Time Lags between Activities; TP9 is an extension of TP1 considering loops and iterations
Product Evaluation
We differentiate between supported, partially supported, not supported, and not specified.
If an evaluation object provides support for the particular pattern the supported design choices are listed. If the pattern is only partially supported (e.g., by a work-around) this is indicated by the additional label "*" and if support is not specified this is indicated by the label "?". Missing support is labeled with "-".
| Product/Language | Version | Score | Motivation |
| Microsoft Outlook | 2010 | D[a], E[a, c], K[a], L[a] | partially supported |
| Sunbird | 1.0 | D[a], E[a], K[a], L[a] | partially supported |
| Google Calendar | 12.2011 | D[a], E[a], K[a], L[a] | partially supported |
| Microsoft Project | 2010 | D[a*], E[a*,c*], K[a], L[a] | partially supported |
| BPMN | 2.0 | D[a*], E[c*], K[a], L[a,b] | partially supported (with limits) |
| IBM Websphere Integration Developer | 6.1 | D[a*], E[a*,c], K[a], L[a,b] | partially supported through a work-around |
| WebSphere Lombardi Edition | 7.1 | D[a*], E[c*], K[a], L[a,b] | partially supported (with limits) |
| AristaFlow | 1.0.1 | D[b], E[c*,d*], K[a], L[a,b] | partially supported |
| Intalio | 6.0.3 | D[a*], E[c], K[a], L[a,b] | partially supported through a work-around |
| TIBCO Business Studio | 3.4.2 | D[a*], E[c*], K[a], L[a] | partially supported (with limits) |
| Bettini et al. | — | loops are explicitly excluded from considerations | |
| Combi et al. | D[a,b,c], E[a?,b?,c?,d?], K[a], L[b] | partially supported (but not really clear) | |
| Eder et al. | — | loops are explicitly excluded from considerations | |
| Marjanovic et al. | — | loops are explicitly excluded | |
| Zhuge et al. | — | not discussed |