0

I was curious to find out the advantages of black box pools over white box pools and vice versa. I know blackbox pools are used to model an external participant, whist whitebox pools are used in modelling entities whose process we are interested in. But is there really any advantage of using one over the other or can we just pick and choose?

Christophe
  • 74,672
  • 10
  • 115
  • 187
user3263215
  • 1
  • I am not an expert in BPMN, but from what you wrote, it seems quite clear that there is a convention about the semantics (blackbox=external, whitebox=internal) - so why not just stick to that convention? Should make things easier to read for anyone else who is used to that convention. – Doc Brown Nov 20 '14 at 14:47
  • I have no intention from deviating from the convention of black and white box pools. All I am curious about is knowing the advantages of one over the other. That's all. – user3263215 Nov 20 '14 at 14:58

1 Answers1

1

Your question maybe just a misunderstanding - you seem to believe there is a difference between those types of pools. But according to this documentation about BPMN, there is technically no difference between black-box and white-box pools - at least, when we talk about the notation. The only difference is the fact a black box pool is typically kept empty, and that is actually what it makes a "black box" - you don't see what is going on inside.

However, specific BPMN tools may introduce differences between those two kind of pools, assumed they provide you with two different symbols or elements. Maybe they use a slightly different notation, maybe they forbid actually to model the inner activities in a black-box-pool, or maybe they make no difference at all. So if you want to know how your modeling tool behaves, check the manual of your tool.

Doc Brown
  • 199,015
  • 33
  • 367
  • 565