Declarative vs. Imperative Process Modeling Languages: The Issue of Maintainability.

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Submitted and accepted as full paper at the 1st International Conference on Exploring Modeling Methods in Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD'09).

Author

• Dirk Fahland, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
• Daniel Lübke, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany
• Jan Mendling, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
• Hajo Reijers, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
• Barbara Weber, University of Innsbruck, Austria
• Matthias Weidlich, Hasso-Plattner-Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany
• Stefan Zugal, University of Innsbruck, Austria

Abstract

Advantages and shortcomings of different process modeling languages are heavily debated, both in academia and industry, but little evidence is presented to support judgements. With this paper we aim to contribute to a more rigorous, theoretical discussion of the topic by drawing a link to well-established research on program comprehension. In particular, we focus on imperative and declarative techniques of modeling a process. Cognitive research has demonstrated that imperative programs deliver sequential information much better while declarative programs offer clear insight into circumstantial information.

In this paper we show that in principle this argument can be transferred to respective features of process modeling languages. Our contribution is a pair of propositions that are routed in the cognitive dimensions framework. In future research, we aim to challenge these propositions by an experiment.

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BibTeX

 @InProceedings{FahlandLMRWWZ2009_emmsad,
   address   = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands},
   author    = {Dirk Fahland and Daniel L\"{u}bke and Jan Mendling and
                Hajo Reijers and Barbara Weber and Matthias Weidlich and
                Stefan Zugal},
   booktitle = {Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Exploring
                Modeling Methods in Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD'09)},
   editor    = {John Krogstie and Terry Halpin and Erik Proper},
   month     = jun,
   pages     = {353-366},
   publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
   series    = {Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing},
   title     = {{Declarative versus Imperative Process Modeling Languages:
                The Issue of Understandability}},
   volume    = {29},
   year      = {2009}
 }