Towards an EPC Standardization – A Literature Review on Exchange Formats for EPC Models

Riehle Dennis M, Jannaber Sven, Karhof Arne, Delfmann Patrick, Thomas Olliver, Becker Jörg

Abstract
Event-driven process chains (EPCs) have been used to create business process models from the early 90s and are still used in research and practice today. However, up to today, there is still no accepted standard for the EPC modelling language, which caused several different EPC dialects to appear and disappear over the last decades. To contribute to the development of a future standard for the EPC modelling language, we have conducted a systematic literature review on exchange formats for EPC models. In the paper at hand, we describe seven different exchange and storage formats which we have found in literature and compare their properties and capabilities. We find that the EPC Markup Language (EPML) has the greatest capabilities so far, as it supports the greatest variety of different EPC dialects. With our discussion, we contribute to the development of an EPC standard in the future, by describing how EPML can be adapted as a standardized exchange language for EPC models, which is part of a future standard for the EPC language.