Process mining techniques can be used to automatically discover process models.
In these process models, activities play a central role. These correspond to transitions in Petri nets, tasks in YAWL, functions in EPCs, state transitions in transition
systems, and tasks in BPMN. However, the transactional life-cycle model in Fig. 4.3
shows that there may be multiple events referring to the same activity. Some process mining techniques take into account the transactional model whereas others
just consider atomic events. Moreover, sometimes we just want to focus on complete events whereas at other times the focus may be on withdrawals. This can be
supported by filtering (e.g., removing events of a particular type) and by the concept
of a classifier. A classifier is a function that maps the attributes of an event onto
a label used in the resulting process model. This can be seen as the “name” of the
event. In principle, there can be many classifiers. However, only one is used at a
time. Therefore, we can use the notation e to refer to the name used in the process
model.