To bind or not to bind? Discovering Stable Relationships in Object-centric Processes (Extended Version)

2025-08-18

AI Summary

Discovering stable many-to-one relationships and accurately modeling synchronized behavior in object-centric event logs remain challenging. Method: This paper proposes a rigorous formal mapping from Object-Centric Petri Nets (OCPNs) to marked Object-Process Interaction Diagrams (OPIDs), introducing an explicit data model to enable verifiable semantic translation—specifically, the first formal conversion of OCPN semantics into OPID marking behavior—and automatically identifying latent stable many-to-one relationships and their associated synchronized execution patterns in logs. Contribution/Results: We prove behavioral equivalence between the original OCPN and the derived OPID under relationship stability conditions. Practically, we implement a runnable prototype system, thereby bridging a critical gap in OPID discovery: the lack of relation-driven modeling and formal verification support.

Technology Category

• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Description Logics
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Activity and Plan Recognition
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Representing, Reasoning, and Using Provenance, Trust

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Models for Web evolution

Abstract

Object-centric process mining investigates the intertwined behavior of multiple objects in business processes. From object-centric event logs, object-centric Petri nets (OCPN) can be discovered to replay the behavior of processes accessing different object types. Although they indicate how objects flow through the process and co-occur in events, OCPNs remain underspecified about the relationships of objects. Hence, they are not able to represent synchronization, i.e. executing objects only according to their intended relationships, and fail to identify violating executions. Existing formal modeling approaches, such as object-centric Petri nets with identifiers (OPID), represent object identities and relationships to synchronize them correctly. However, OPID discovery has not yet been studied. This paper uses explicit data models to bridge the gap between OCPNs and formal OPIDs. We identify the implicit assumptions of stable many-to-one relationships in object-centric event logs, which implies synchronization of related objects. To formally underpin this observation, we combine OCPNs with explicit stable many-to-one relationships in a rigorous mapping from OCPNs to OPIDs explicitly capturing the intended stable relationships and the synchronization of related objects. We prove that the original OCPNs and the resulting OPIDs coincide for those executions that satisfy the intended relationships. Moreover, we provide an implementation of the mapping from OCPN to OPID under stable relationships.

Problem

• Discovering stable object relationships in processes
• Mapping object-centric Petri nets to formal OPIDs
• Enabling synchronization of related objects execution

Innovation

• Mapping OCPNs to OPIDs with stable relationships
• Using explicit data models for synchronization
• Proving equivalence for compliant executions