BPMN Sim - How to incorporate Message Flows?

[Paolo F Cantoni]

My (somewhat limited - I haven't been a serious practitioner in the past) understanding of BPMN was that you had to use Message Flows when transferring control between flow items in different Pools.  We built a non-trivial business process that followed this rule.  However, when we tried to run the simulation engine over that process, it would not get past the first Message Flow.

• Is my understanding correct?  (You should use Message Flows and Not Sequence Flows between pools)
• Why will the simulation work only if we convert ALL the Message Flows to Sequence Flows?

What is the best practice here?

TIA,
Paolo

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Anyone?

Paolo

[Ian Mitchell]

You're right Paolo - no Sequence flows between pools, only Message Flows. (I had to look back into my own BPMN course to make sure...)

[philchudley]

Hi Paulo

Does this help?

https://sparxsystems.com/resources/user-guides/16.0/simulation/business-process-simulation-bpsim.pdf

Page 92 onwards.

It may help to work through the example listed here which uses message flow. Apparently, some kind of parameter configuration is required to get Message Flows to work. Have not tried this example myself, but it may get you nearer to a solution.

All the best

Phil

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Hi Paolo

Does this help?

https://sparxsystems.com/resources/user-guides/16.0/simulation/business-process-simulation-bpsim.pdf

Page 92 onwards.

It may help to work through the example that uses message flow.  Apparently, some kind of parameter configuration is required to get Message Flows to work.  I have not tried this example myself, but it may get you closer to a solution.

All the best

Phil

Thanks, Phil,
yes, I have tried this exact example, but the UI no longer matches the instructions from page 93.  Also, it's unclear to me why we need to use BPSim instead of the more straightforward BPMN simulation when we use messages unless you can't handle parallel execution in simple BPMN simulation.  So we must use the more powerful BPSim in those circumstances.  That seems reasonable, but I haven't encountered it in any discussion.  Thoughts?

I would really like some Sparxians; after all, they wrote the stuff to explain more the why and how this works.

Paolo

[Paolo F Cantoni]

You're right, Paolo - no Sequence flows between pools, only Message Flows.  (I had to look back into my own BPMN course to make sure...)

Hi Ian,
Interestingly, if I break the rule (which I have to to get my BPMN Sim scenario simulations working), validating the package DOESN'T show any errors (for the Sequence Flows crossing Pool boundaries).  I do disable strict connector syntax, but I would have thought that would not invalidate the validation process (pun intended!).


Paolo