Comparing business definition languages

Business process modeling is one of the most complex activities. It requires supporting different viewpoints (analyst, designer, user, etc). The need to factor in each of these viewpoints contributes to increase the complexity of the tools and the modeling languages. The objective of this paper is to explain the principal concepts of the business by evaluating the most important languages for business process modeling. The languages are classified according to the “four perspectives” of Curtis [1] (Functional, Dynamic, Informational and Organizational) augmented by the List-Korherr [2] meta-model that adds to the previous mentioned four perspectives a new one denominated Business Process Context Perspective. The latter is extremely useful as a detailed overview of the business process including its most important characteristics. At the end of this paper, some considerations will be offered in the aim of identifying the high level specifications needed to implement an advanced business process editor based on the Eclipse environment.