On the Translation between BPMN and BPEL: Conceptual Mismatch between Process Modeling Languages

Business practice shows that, often, different process models are employed in the various phases of the Business Process Management life cycle, each providing a different paradigm for capturing and representing the business process domain. Recently, significant efforts have been made to overcome the disintegration of process models by providing complementary language standards for process design (BPMN) and execution (BPEL), based on the claim that these languages are semantically integrated. However, the conceptual mapping between both languages remains unclear, thus it is undecided whether any BPMN diagram can be transformed to BPEL. In this paper we argue that there is conceptual mismatch between BPMN and BPEL that needs to be identified in order to guide the language integration process semantically. In our analysis we take into account the various perspectives of the Business Process Management life cycle, in particular business and technical analyst perspectives. Our approach is generic and can also be utilized as a guiding framework for identifying conceptual mismatch between other business process modeling languages.