About

BPMN-OS is a framework for optimisation and simulation of business processes. It is based on BPMN 2.0 and uses the built-in extension mechanism to provide data relevant for optimisation and simulation.

Architecture

The framework is composed of the components illustrated above:

Model provider: The model provider reads a BPMN model containing extension elements required for optimisation and simulation.
Data provider: The data provider creates instances of the processes with respective instance data. It creates a scenario that can be run by the execution engine.
Execution engine: The execution engine maintains a system state containing state machines for each BPMN element with a scope and all tokens within the scope. It automatically advances all tokens as far as possible and waits for the dispatch of events and decisions made by the controller.
Controller: The controller is responsible for making all necessary decisions during process execution.
Observer: Observers can connect to the execution engine to monitor changes in the execution.

Installation

You can obtain BPMN-OS from https://github.com/bpmn-os/bpmnos-engine.

Dependencies

BPMN-OS requires Xerces-C++ 3.2.x., bpmn++, and schematic++.

On Ubuntu Linux Xerces can be installed by

sudo apt install libxerces-c-dev

You can obtain bpmn++ from https://github.com/bpmn-os/bpmnpp and schematic++ from https://github.com/rajgoel/schematicpp. Please follow build and install instructions provided by these dependencies.

Build BPMN-OS

The library is built like a typical CMake project.

A normal build will look something like this (output omitted):

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
cd ..

You can use multiple processors to reduce build times

make -j[n]

where [n] is the number of processors to be used.

Compiler optimizations

The NDEBUG flag can be used to turn on or off compiler optimizations.

To turn on compiler optimizations use

cmake -DNDEBUG=ON ..

To turn off compiler optimizations use

cmake -DNDEBUG=OFF ..

This creates a single header file lib/bpmnos-model.h and a library lib/libbpmnos-model.a. Moreover, an executable bpmnos using these libraries is created in the bin folder. An example showing how to use this executable is given in the [example folder](example).