Controlling Time-Awareness in Modularized Processes (Extended Version)

The proper handling of temporal process constraints is crucial in many application domains. However, a sophisticated support of time-aware processes is still missing in contemporary information systems. As a particular challenge, temporal constraints must be also handled for modularized processes (i.e., processes comprising subprocesses), enabling the re-use of process knowledge as well as the modular design of complex processes. This paper focuses on the representation and support of time-aware modularized processes. In particular, we present a sound and complete method to derive the duration restrictions of a time-aware (sub-)process in such a way that its temporal properties are completely specified. We then show how this characterization of a process can be utilized when re-using it as a subprocess within a modularized process.