Modeling or framework standards are very important for correctly describing semantics through models and thus establishing a good communication among different stakeholders. But regular everyday experience is teaching us that model and diagram interchange (MDI) with e.g. UML® models (via XMI) or BPMN™ models (via XPDL) does not always work well to receive high quality deliverables, to say the least. And please forget about round-tripping among tools. So MDI is usually a somewhat horrible exercise for architects or developers.

At BPM-X we receive inquiries from organizations round the globe using tools from different vendors for enterprise architecture (EA), business process analysis (BPA) or business process management systems (BPMS). Even if a BPM platform vendor like TIBCO offers the complete stack of BPM tools, additional tools come into the game for e.g. for process mapping using SPARX Enterprise Architect or Microsoft Visio® with the need to interchange process model data.

There is an interesting report by Michael zur Muehlen, “Enterprise Architecture based on Design Primitives and Patterns, Guidelines for the Design and Development of Event-Trace Descriptions (DoDAF OV-6c) using BPMN”, already published in 2009 discussing about round-trip architecture, interoperability issues and architectural primitives of the DoDAF architecture framework.

The Object Management Group (OMG) has recently established the BPMN model interchange working group (BPMN MIWG). This new group has the mission, amongst others, to develop a test framework for an improved interchange of process models using the BPMN format among different tools which are using the BPMN 2.0 modeling language.