Complexity analysis of BPEL Web processes

Several organizations have already realized the potential of using WS-BEPL, the Process Execution Language for Web Services, to model the behavior of Web services in business processes. WS-BPEL provides a model for describing simple or complex interactions between business partners. In some cases, WS-BPEL process designs can be highly complex, due, for example, to the vast number of Web services carried out in global markets. High complexity in a process has several undesirable drawbacks, it may result in poor understandability, more errors, defects, and exceptions leading to processes requiring more time to be developed, tested and maintained. Therefore, excessive complexity should be avoided. Processes which are highly complex tend be less flexible, since it is more complicated to make changes to the process. The major goal of this paper is to present two metrics to analyze the control-flow complexity (CFC) of WS-BPEL Web processes. The metrics are to be used at designtime to evaluate the complexity of a process design before implementation actually exists.