Instances and Connectors: Issues for a Second Generation Process Language

Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been de ned, used and evaluated. It is now possible to consider second generation languages based on this experience [1, 3, 4]. Rather than develop a second generation wish list this position paper explores two issues: instances and connectors. Instances relate to the relationship between a process model as a description and the, possibly multiple, enacting instances which are created from it. Connectors refers to the issue of concurrency control and achieving a higher level of abstraction in how parts of a model interact. We believe that these issues are key to developing systems which can e ectively support business processes, and that they have not received su cient attention within the process modelling community. Through exploring these issues we also illustrate our approach to designing a second generation process language.