Open Access

Process Query Language: A Domain-Specific Language for Querying Event Logs of Business Processes

 and   
Jun 10, 2025

Cite
Download Cover

ISO 8879:1986 standard: Information processing — Text and office systems — Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Standard, ISO, Geneva, CH, 1986. Search in Google Scholar

ISO 9834-8:2014 standard: Information technology — procedures for the operation of object identifier registration authorities — part 8: Generation of universally unique identifiers (uuids) and their use in object identifiers. Standard, International Organization for Standardization, Geneva, CH, 2014. Search in Google Scholar

ISO 4217:2015 standard: Codes for the representation of currencies. Standard, International Organization for Standardization, Geneva, CH, 2015. Search in Google Scholar

IEEE 1849-2016 Standard for eXtensible Event Stream (XES) for Achieving Interoperability in Event Logs and Event Streams. Standard, IEEE, 2016. Search in Google Scholar

IEEE 1003.1-2017 standard for information technology–portable operating system interface (POSIX(TM)) base specifications, issue 7. Standard, IEEE, 2017. Search in Google Scholar

IEEE 754-2019 standard for floating-point arithmetic. Standard, IEEE, 2019. Search in Google Scholar

ISO 8601-1:2019 standard: Date and time format. Standard, International Organization for Standardization, Geneva, CH, 2019. Search in Google Scholar

Iso/iec 9075 standard: Information technology – Database languages – SQL. Standard, ISO, Geneva, CH, 2019. Search in Google Scholar

Álvarez J. M. P., Díaz A. C., Parody L., Quintero A. M. R., and Gómez-López M. T. Process Instance Query Language and the Process Querying Framework, pages 85–111. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2022. Search in Google Scholar

Alves De Medeiros A., Weijters A., and van der Aalst W. Genetic process mining: an experimental evaluation. Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 14(2):245–304, 2007. Search in Google Scholar

Andrews R., Suriadi S., Ouyang C., and Poppe E. Towards event log querying for data quality. In On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems. OTM 2018 Conferences, pages 116–134, Cham, 2018. Springer International Publishing. Search in Google Scholar

Beheshti S.-M.-R., Benatallah B., Motahari-Nezhad H. R., and Sakr S. A query language for analyzing business processes execution. In Business Process Management, pages 281–297, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Search in Google Scholar

Blackwell A. F., Britton C., Cox A., Green T. R. G., Gurr C., Kadoda G., Kutar M. S., Loomes M., Nehaniv C. L., Petre M., Roast C., Roe C., Wong A., and Young R. M. Cognitive dimensions of notations: Design tools for cognitive technology. In Cognitive Technology: Instruments of Mind, pages 325–341, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2001. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Search in Google Scholar

Boubeta-Puig J., Ortiz G., and Medina-Bulo I. MEdit4CEP: A model-driven solution for real-time decision making in SOA 2.0. Knowledge-Based Systems, 89:97–112, 2015. Search in Google Scholar

Boubeta-Puig J., Ortiz G., and Medina-Bulo I. ModeL4CEP: Graphical domain-specific modeling languages for cep domains and event patterns. Expert Systems with Applications, 42(21):8095–8110, 2015. Search in Google Scholar

Carmona J. Projection approaches to process mining using region-based techniques. Data Min. Knowl. Discov., 24(1):218–246, 2012. Search in Google Scholar

Cass S. Top programming languages. https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-2024, 2024. Search in Google Scholar

Costa F., Silva V., de Oliveira D., Ocaña K., Ogasawara E., Dias J., and Mattoso M. Capturing and querying workflow runtime provenance with PROV: A practical approach. In Proceedings of the Joint EDBT/ICDT 2013 Workshops, EDBT ’13, page 282–289, New York, NY, USA, 2013. Association for Computing Machinery. Search in Google Scholar

CSS specifications. Standard, W3C, 2021. Search in Google Scholar

Dallagassa M. R., dos Santos Garcia C., Scalabrin E. E., Ioshii S. O., and Carvalho D. R. Opportunities and challenges for applying process mining in health-care: a systematic mapping study. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 13(1):165–182, Jan 2022. Search in Google Scholar

Dijcks J.-P. Why does it take forever to build ETL processes? http://blogs.oracle.com/datawarehousing/why-does-it-take-forever-to-build-etl-processes-v2, 2009. accessed 2024-11-07. Search in Google Scholar

Dijkstra E. W. On the cruelty of really teaching computing science, 1988. Search in Google Scholar

The decision model and notation specification version 1.3. Standard, Object Management Group, 2021. Search in Google Scholar

dos Santos Garcia C., Meincheim A., Faria Junior E. R., Dallagassa M. R., Sato D. M. V., Carvalho D. R., Santos E. A. P., and Scalabrin E. E. Process mining techniques and applications – a systematic mapping study. Expert Systems with Applications, 133:260–295, 2019. Search in Google Scholar

Durand J., Cho H., Moberg D., and Woo J. XTemp: Event-driven testing and monitoring of business processes: Leveraging XML, XPath and XSLT for a practical event processing. In Balisage Series on Markup Technologies, volume 7, Montréal, Canada, 2-5 Aug. 2011. Search in Google Scholar

Eckel B. and Isakova S. Atomic Kotlin. Mindview LLC, 2021. Search in Google Scholar

El Kamouchi H., Kissi M., and El Beggar O. Low-code/no-code development: A systematic literature review. In 2023 14th International Conference on Intelligent Systems: Theories and Applications (SITA), pages 1–8, 2023. Search in Google Scholar

EsperTech Inc. Esper. http://espertech.com. accessed 2024-11-07. Search in Google Scholar

Esser S. and Fahland D. Multi-dimensional event data in graph databases. Journal on Data Semantics, 10(1):109–141, Jun 2021. Search in Google Scholar

Francis N., Green A., Guagliardo P., Libkin L., Lindaaker T., Marsault V., Plantikow S., Rydberg M., Selmer P., and Taylor A. Cypher: An evolving query language for property graphs. In Proceedings of the 2018 international conference on management of data, pages 1433–1445, 2018. Search in Google Scholar

Gonzalez Lopez de Murillas E. Process mining on databases: extracting event data from real-life data sources. Phd thesis 1 (research TU/e / graduation TU/e), Mathematics and Computer Science, Feb. 2019. Proefschrift. Search in Google Scholar

González López de Murillas E., Reijers H. A., and van der Aalst W. M. P. Everything you always wanted to know about your process, but did not know how to ask. In Business Process Management Workshops, pages 296–309, Cham, 2017. Springer International Publishing. Search in Google Scholar

Green T., Blandford A., Church L., Roast C., and Clarke S. Cognitive dimensions: Achievements, new directions, and open questions. Journal of Visual Languages & Computing, 17(4):328–365, 2006. Ten Years of Cognitive Dimensions. Search in Google Scholar

Haan K. and Watts R. Top website statistics for 2024. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/website-statistics/, 2024. accessed 2024-11-07. Search in Google Scholar

Hazel P. Perl compatible regular expressions. Technical report, 2021. Search in Google Scholar

HTML living standard. Standard, WHATWG, 2024. Search in Google Scholar

Jones C. Programming languages table release 8.2. http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/dmz/cs697/langtbl.htm, 1996. accessed 2024-11-07. Search in Google Scholar

Jungmann L., Matějček D., Kornilov D., Bratt E., King G., Filho I. J., Grassel J., Dazey W., Shannon B., Cortez R., Liu S., Tian W., and B Y. K. Jakarta persistence API 3.0, 2020. Search in Google Scholar

Kobeissi M., Assy N., Gaaloul W., Defude B., Benatallah B., and Haidar B. Natural language querying of process execution data. Information Systems, 116:102227, 2023. Search in Google Scholar

La Rosa M., Reijers H. A., van der Aalst W. M., Dijkman R. M., Mendling J., Dumas M., and García-Bañuelos L. Apromore: An advanced process model repository. Expert Systems with Applications, 38(6):7029–7040, 2011. Search in Google Scholar

Liu D., Pedrinaci C., and Domingue J. Semantic enabled complex event language for business process monitoring. In Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Semantic Business Process Management, SBPM ’09, page 31–34, New York, NY, USA, 2009. Association for Computing Machinery. Search in Google Scholar

Marin-Castro H. M. and Tello-Leal E. An end-to-end approach and tool for bpmn process discovery. Expert Systems with Applications, 174:114662, 2021. Search in Google Scholar

Marin-Castro H. M. and Tello-Leal E. Event log preprocessing for process mining: A review. Applied Sciences, 11(22), 2021. Search in Google Scholar

Mernik M., Heering J., and Sloane A. M. When and how to develop domain-specific languages. ACM Comput. Surv., 37(4):316–344, Dec. 2005. Search in Google Scholar

Microsoft. Streaminsight. http://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/sql/streaminsight/ee362541(v=sql.111), 2016. accessed 2024-11-07. Search in Google Scholar

Momotko M. and Subieta K. Process query language: A way to make workflow processes more flexible. In Advances in Databases and Information Systems, pages 306–321, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2004. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Search in Google Scholar

Noghabi S. A., Paramasivam K., Pan Y., Ramesh N., Bringhurst J., Gupta I., and Campbell R. H. Samza: stateful scalable stream processing at linkedin. Proc. VLDB Endow., 10(12):1634–1645, Aug. 2017. Search in Google Scholar

Nordmann A., Hochgeschwender N., and Wrede S. A survey on domain-specific languages in robotics. In Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots, pages 195–206, Cham, 2014. Springer International Publishing. Search in Google Scholar

Parr T. The Definitive ANTLR 4 Reference. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2nd edition, 2013. Search in Google Scholar

Pawlak T. P. and Potoniec J. Processm: Intelligent process mining software. SoftwareX, 30:102079, 2025. Search in Google Scholar

Perez-Alvarez J. M., Gomez-Lopez M. T., Parody L., and Gasca R. M. Process instance query language to include process performance indicators in DMN. In 2016 IEEE 20th International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Workshop (EDOCW), pages 1–8, 2016. Search in Google Scholar

Polyvyanyy A., ter Hofstede A. H., La Rosa M., Ouyang C., and Pika A. Process query language: Design, implementation, and evaluation. Information Systems, 122:102337, 2024. Search in Google Scholar

Poppe O., Giessl S., Rundensteiner E. A., and Bry F. The HIT Model: Workflow-Aware Event Stream Monitoring, pages 26–50. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013. Search in Google Scholar

Prechelt L. An empirical comparison of seven programming languages. Computer, 33(10):23–29, 2000. Search in Google Scholar

Raja A. and Lakshmanan D. Domain specific languages. International Journal of Computer Applications, 1(21):99–105, February 2010. Search in Google Scholar

JavaScript object notation (JSON) data interchange format. Standard, IETF, Dec. 2017. Search in Google Scholar

Schönig H.-J. Mastering PostgreSQL 13. Packt Publishing, 4th edition, 2020. Search in Google Scholar

solid IT gmbh. DB Engines: Knowledge base of relational and NoSQL database management systems, 7 Nov. 2024. Search in Google Scholar

SPARQL 1.1 overview: W3C Recommendation. Standard, W3C, 2013. Search in Google Scholar

Scalable vector graphics (SVG) 2. Standard, W3C, Oct. 2018. Search in Google Scholar

Tang Y., Cui W., and Su J. A query language for workflow logs. ACM Trans. Manage. Inf. Syst., 13(2), Dec. 2021. Search in Google Scholar

Teinemaa I., Dumas M., Leontjeva A., and Maggi F. M. Temporal stability in predictive process monitoring. Data Min. Knowl. Discov., 32(5):1306–1338, 2018. Search in Google Scholar

ter Hofstede A. H. M., Ouyang C., La Rosa M., Song L., Wang J., and Polyvyanyy A. APQL: A process-model query language. In Asia Pacific Business Process Management, pages 23–38, Cham, 2013. Springer International Publishing. Search in Google Scholar

The Apache Software Foundation. Cassandra. http://cassandra.apache.org, 2021. accessed 2024-11-07. Search in Google Scholar

van der Aalst W. M. P. Process Mining: Data Science in Action. Springer, Heidelberg, 2nd edition, 2016. Search in Google Scholar

van der Aalst W. M. P., Bolt A., and van Zelst S. J. RapidProM: mine your processes and not just your data. CoRR, abs/1703.03740, 2017. Search in Google Scholar

van Deursen A., Klint P., and Visser J. Domain-specific languages: An annotated bibliography. SIGPLAN Not., 35(6):26–36, June 2000. Search in Google Scholar

van Dongen B. Real-life event logs - Hospital log, 3 2011. Search in Google Scholar

van Dongen B. F., de Medeiros A. K. A., Verbeek H. M. W., Weijters A. J. M. M., and van der Aalst W. M. P. The ProM framework: A new era in process mining tool support. In Applications and Theory of Petri Nets 2005, pages 444–454, Berlin, 2005. Springer. Search in Google Scholar

van Dongen B. F. and Shabani S. Relational XES: Data management for process mining. In Proceedings of the CAiSE 2015 Forum at the 27th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering co-located with 27th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2015), Stockholm, Sweden, June 10th, 2015, volume 1367 of CEUR Workshop Proceedings, pages 169–176. CEUR-WS.org, 2015. Search in Google Scholar

van Steen M. and Tanenbaum A. Distributed Systems. distributed-systems.net, 3 edition, 2017. Search in Google Scholar

Visser E. WebDSL: A case study in domain-specific language engineering. In Generative and Transformational Techniques in Software Engineering II, International Summer School, GTTSE 2007, volume 5235 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 291–373, Braga, Portugal, 2007. Springer. Search in Google Scholar

Vogelgesang T., Ambrosy J., Becher D., Seilbeck R., Geyer-Klingeberg J., and Klenk M. Celonis PQL: A Query Language for Process Mining, pages 377–408. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2022. Search in Google Scholar

Wen L., van der Aalst W. M. P., Wang J., and Sun J. Mining process models with non-free-choice constructs. Data Min. Knowl. Discov., 15(2):145–180, 2007. Search in Google Scholar

Extensible markup language (XML) 1.0 (fifth edition). Standard, W3C, Feb. 2008. Search in Google Scholar

XML testing and event-driven monitoring of processes (XTemp) version 1.0. Standard, OASIS, 2011. Search in Google Scholar

Language:
English
Publication timeframe:
4 times per year
Journal Subjects:
Computer Sciences, Artificial Intelligence, Software Development