Is there any BPMN 2.0 Parser for .NET?

Question

In general, I am searching for a way to Model business processes. I found UML and BPMN quite often as an answer to this. Now I want to check this models with a Program. There is only an UML specification HOW this elements should look like, not how this different models should be saved. Thats why I looked closer at BPMN. There is a BPMN 2.0 specification be the Object Management Group.

I downloaded a BPMN editor and start to play with this notation. Now I want to start to write a program that checks this BPMN 2.0 files (more precisely they are xml files). Is there any .NET Framework and/or Implementation that work with this BPMN ? I just don't want to write my own extended XML Parser for this.

If not: What other Models can be used to do a programmatic check on this kind of models ?

About the checks: I want to search if different kind of information can be found in the models and throw warnings if this information can not be found.

Answer 1

It seems that there is corently no BPMN 2.0 Parser for .NET, but with the xsd.exe, that is Part of the Microsoft SDK, it is possible to create one by your own, not only for BPMN. How to do it:

• Download the 5 xsd Files from the omg: http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/ and place them in the same folder.
• run the xsd.exe with four parameters: xsd.exe DC.xsd DI.xsd BPMNDI.xsd BPMN20.xsd /classes

The fifth file will be added by the Application. Be sure to have the correct order of the xsd. Otherwise it won't work.

On my Maschine the Call looks like this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin\xsd.exe" "C:\Users\me\DC.xsd" "C:\Users\me\DI.xsd" "C:\Users\me\BPMNDI.xsd" "C:\Users\me\BPMN20.xsd" /classes

As a result you will receive a BPMN20.cs with all classes in there. You can even change the output language (default is C#). Just run xsd.exe without a parameter to see all options.

To use it in .Net, be sure to add System.Xml as a Assembly, then you can get the Object like this:

var serialzer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(tDefinitions));
var XmlStream = new StreamReader("bpmn.xml");
var document= (tDefinitions) serialzer.Deserialize(XmlStream);

Answer 2

A workaround with the problem of the answer of @user2757652 is to modify BPMN20.xsd and Semantic.xsd downloaded from http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/. other files can be used unchanged.

I replaced flowElement ref with its ancestors (in Semantics.xsd) and rootElement ref (in BPMN20.xsd) with process and collaboration. you might relplace all ancestors of rootElement. altough the resulting xsd is not standard and could validate some invalid BPMN XMLs, it fulfilled my needs

you can download the modified version from Github Gist