Issue 15808: Outgoing Paths after Inclusive Gateway (bpmn2-rtf) Source: (, ) Nature: Clarification Severity: Significant Summary: I think that the number of outgoing paths after an Inclusive Gateway are conflicting. According to page 37 and page 300, all combinations of paths MAY be taken, from zero to all. However, on page 362 it is mentioned several times that one or more alternative branches are chosen (one of more branches MAY be activated upstream). The difference is taking zero paths. Is it possible to take zero paths after an Inclusive Gateway? If yes, is the process flow interrupted or can the flow just continue after a later merge? What happens if there is no corresponding merge for the split? It seems that taking zero paths is possible based on the conditions which are evaluated separately. However, I think, that the specification from page 362 should be taken and that one or more outgoing paths receive a token. Then A OR B can also be transformed to (A XOR B) XOR (A AND B). Also the definition of logical disjunction is that one or more of its operands are true (according to the truth table A OR B is only false if A is false and B is false). If the intention behind taking zero paths is that it should be possible to execute non of the tasks, then my second suggestion would be to define that an "empty" path is mandatory and if no task should be executed then a token can be sent on the "empty" path. Also if the separately evaluated conditions are the reason for allowing zero paths, again a mandataroy empty default path could be a solution to avoid that the inclusive split contradicts with the logical disjunction. As Inclusive Gateways are a very complex topic a discussion would be interesting. Resolution: Revised Text: Actions taken: November 9, 2010: received issue Discussion: End of Annotations:===== m: webmaster@omg.org Date: 09 Nov 2010 08:14:21 -0500 To: Subject: Issue/Bug Report ******************************************************************************* Name: Christine Natschlär Employer: mailFrom: Christine.Natschlaeger@scch.at Terms_Agreement: I agree Specification: Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) Section: 11.6.3 FormalNumber: dtc/2010-06-05 Version: 2.0 Doc_Year: 2010 Doc_Month: June Doc_Day: 05 Page: 362 Title: Outgoing Paths after Inclusive Gateway Nature: Clarification Severity: Significant CODE: 3TMw8 B1: Report Issue Description: Dear BPMN-Team, I think that the number of outgoing paths after an Inclusive Gateway are conflicting. According to page 37 and page 300, all combinations of paths MAY be taken, from zero to all. However, on page 362 it is mentioned several times that one or more alternative branches are chosen (one of more branches MAY be activated upstream). The difference is taking zero paths. Is it possible to take zero paths after an Inclusive Gateway? If yes, is the process flow interrupted or can the flow just continue after a later merge? What happens if there is no corresponding merge for the split? It seems that taking zero paths is possible based on the conditions which are evaluated separately. However, I think, that the specification from page 362 should be taken and that one or more outgoing paths receive a token. Then A OR B can also be transformed to (A XOR B) XOR (A AND B). Also the definition of logical disjunction is that one or more of its operands are true (according to the truth table A OR B is only false if A is false and B is false). If the intention behind taking zero paths is that it should be possible to execute non of the tasks, then my second suggestion would be to define that an "empty" path is mandatory and if no task should be executed then a token can be sent on the "empty" path. Also if the separately evaluated conditions are the reason for allowing zero paths, again a mandataroy empty default path could be a solution to avoid that the inclusive split contradicts with the logical disjunction. As Inclusive Gateways are a very complex topic a discussion would be interesting. Best regards, Christine Natschlär