Which Event Happened First? Deferred Choice on Blockchain Using Oracles
- First come, first served: Critical choices between alternative actions are often made based on events external to an organization, and reacting promptly to their occurrence can be a major advantage over the competition. In Business Process Management (BPM), such deferred choices can be expressed in process models, and they are an important aspect of process engines. Blockchain-based process execution approaches are no exception to this, but are severely limited by the inherent properties of the platform: The isolated environment prevents direct access to external entities and data, and the non-continual runtime based entirely on atomic transactions impedes the monitoring and detection of events. In this paper we provide an in-depth examination of the semantics of deferred choice, and transfer them to environments such as the blockchain. We introduce and compare several oracle architectures able to satisfy certain requirements, and show that they can be implemented using state-of-the-art blockchain technology.
Author details: | Jan LadleifORCiDGND, Mathias WeskeORCiDGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-550681 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-55068 |
Title of parent work (German): | Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Reihe der Digital Engineering Fakultät |
Publication series (Volume number): | Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Reihe der Digital Engineering Fakultät (11) |
Publisher: | Universitätsverlag Potsdam |
Place of publishing: | Potsdam |
Further contributing person(s): | Claudio Di Ciccio, Remo Pareschi, Giovanni Meroni |
Publication type: | Postprint |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2022/06/03 |
Publication year: | 2021 |
Publishing institution: | Universität Potsdam |
Release date: | 2022/06/07 |
Tag: | blockchain; business process management; business processes; deferred choice; formal semantics; oracles; smart contracts; workflow patterns |
Volume: | 4 |
Article number: | 758169 |
Number of pages: | 16 |
First page: | 1 |
Last Page: | 16 |
Organizational units: | Digital Engineering Fakultät / Hasso-Plattner-Institut für Digital Engineering GmbH |
DDC classification: | 0 Informatik, Informationswissenschaft, allgemeine Werke / 00 Informatik, Wissen, Systeme / 004 Datenverarbeitung; Informatik |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Green Open-Access |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |
External remark: | Bibliographieeintrag der Originalveröffentlichung/Quelle |