Process Orientation and Object-Orientation - An Approach for Integrating UML and Event-Driven Process Chains (EPC)

Event-driven process chains (EPC) are used by many companies for modelling, analysing and redesigning business processes. The resulting EPC models are used as a starting point for the development of information systems and for the definition of workflows. They can be applied for simulation and activity based costing. A major area of application is the implementation of standard software packages, because many vendors have documented their software's processes with EPCs. Since the unified modeling language (UML) as the new standard for modelling object-oriented systems does not yet cover all aspects required for the above mentioned application areas, an integrated approach is required for desribing the dependencies between event-driven process chains and UML diagrams. In this paper, such an integrated approach is presented. It focuses mainly on the connection between EPC, class diagrams, and statechart diagrams, but the relationships between EPC, use case diagrams, and activity diagrams are also discussed.