Discovering Business Processes in Legacy Systems Using Business Rules and Log Mining

2010 ◽

pp. 1-14

Author(s):

Liliana María Favre

Keyword(s):

Reverse Engineering ◽

Design Patterns ◽

Relational Databases ◽

Business Processes ◽

Source Code ◽

Legacy Systems ◽

Business Rules ◽

Organizational Strategies ◽

High Level ◽

The Way

Reverse Engineering is the process of analyzing available software artifacts such as requirements, design, architectures, code or byte code, with the objective of extracting information and providing high-level views on the underlying system. A common idea in reverse engineering is to exploit the source code as the most reliable description both of the behavior of a software system and of the organization and its business rules. However, reverse engineering is immersed in a variety of tasks related to comprehending and modifying software such as re-documentation of programs and relational databases, recovering of architectures, recovering of alternative design views, recovering of design patterns, building traceability between code and designs, modernization of interfaces or extracting the source code or high level abstractions from byte code when the source code is not available. Reverse engineering is hardly associated with modernization of legacy systems that were developed many years ago with technology that is now obsolete. These systems include software, hardware, business processes and organizational strategies and politics. Many of them remain in use after more than 20 years; they may be written for technology which is expensive to maintain and which may not be aligned with current organizational politics. Legacy systems resume key knowledge acquired over the life of an organization. Changes are motivated for multiple reasons, for instance the way in which we do business and create value. Important business rules are embedded in the software and may not be documented elsewhere. The way in which the legacy system operates is not explicit (Brodie and Stonebraker, 1995) (Sommerville, 2004).

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Adaptive business rules framework for workflow management

Business Process Management Journal ◽

10.1108/bpmj-08-2017-0219 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 25 (5) ◽

pp. 948-971

Author(s):

Kanana Ezekiel ◽

Vassil Vassilev ◽

Karim Ouazzane ◽

Yogesh Patel

Keyword(s):

Real Time ◽

Business Process ◽

Business Processes ◽

Object Oriented ◽

Process Modelling ◽

Semantic Indexing ◽

Business Rules ◽

Business Process Modelling ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Content Type

Purpose Changing scattered and dynamic business rules in business workflow systems has become a growing problem that hinders the use and configuration of workflow-based applications. There is a gap in the existing research studies which currently focus on solutions that are application specific, without accounting for the universal logical dependencies between the business rules and, as a result, do not support adaptation of the business rules in real time. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach To tackle the above problems, this paper adopts a bottom-up approach, which puts forward a component model of the business process workflows and then adds business rules which have clear logical semantics. This allows incremental development of the workflows and semantic indexing of the rules which govern them during the initial acquisition. Findings The paper introduces an event-driven model for development of business workflows which is purely logic-based and can be easily implemented using an object-oriented technology, together with a model of the business rules dependencies which supports incremental semantic indexing. It also proposes a two-level inference mechanism as a vehicle for controlling the business process execution and the process of adaptation of the business rules at real time based on propagating the dependencies. Research limitations/implications The framework is strictly logical and completely domain-independent. It allows to account both synchronous and asynchronous triggering events as well as both qualitative and quantitative description of the conditions of the rules. Although our primary interest is to apply the framework to the business processes typical in the construction industry we believe our approach has much wider potential due to its strictly logical formalization and domain independence. In fact it can be used to control any business processes where the execution is governed by rules. Practical implications The framework could be applied to both large business process modelling tasks and small but very dynamic business processes like the typical digital business processes found in online banking or e-Commerce. For example, it can be used for adjusting security policies by adding the capability to adapt automatically the access rights to account for additional resources and new channels of operation which can be very interesting ion both B2C and B2B applications. Social implications The potential scope of the impact of the research reported here is linked to the wide applicability of rule-based systems in business. Our approach makes it possible not only to control the execution of the processes, but also to identify problems in the control policies themselves from the point of view of their logical properties – consistency, redundancies and potential gaps in the logics. In addition to this, our approach not only increases the efficiency, but also provides flexibility for adaptation of the policies in real time and increases the security of the overall control which improves the overall quality of the automation. Originality/value The major achievement reported in this paper is the construction of a universal, strictly logic-based event-driven framework for business process modelling and control, which allows purely logical analysis and adaptation of the business rules governing the business workflows through accounting their dependencies. An added value is the support for object-oriented implementation and the incremental indexing which has been possible thanks to the bottom-up approach adopted in the construction of the framework.

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Modeling Business Rule Parallelism by Introducing Inclusive and Complex Gateways in Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules

International Journal of Intelligent Engineering and Systems ◽

10.22266/ijies2021.0228.27 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 281-295

Author(s):

Irene Tangkawarow ◽

◽

Riyanarto Sarno ◽

Daniel Siahaan ◽

◽

...

Keyword(s):

Business Process ◽

Free Choice ◽

Business Processes ◽

Formal Model ◽

Formal Description ◽

Object Management Group ◽

Business Rules ◽

Business Rule ◽

Management Group ◽

Object Management

The Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules (SBVR) standard was developed by the Object Management Group (OMG) for business purposes. SBVR is used for transformation of business vocabulary and business rules into business processes. Gateways are used for regulating the divergence and convergence of flow objects in the business process. The existing business rules in SVBR do not support all gateways in BPMN, whereas there are conditions where branching situations in business rules occur. This article introduces parallelism rules (OR rules) and complex rules to increase 50.6% usage of the existing AND rules and XOR rules in SBVR. The main contribution of this research is to introduce new formal model of inclusive gateway (OR) and complex gateway that allow parallelism and branching to be modeled using SBVR. Thus, this study increases coverage of the usage gateway in SBVR achieved 66.7%. The authors provide branching cases with various levels of complexity, i.e. nested conditions and non-free choice conditions, using the formal description of SBVR.

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Migrating Legacy Systems to the Web

Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, First Edition ◽

10.4018/978-1-59140-553-5.ch344 ◽

2005 ◽

pp. 1949-1954

Author(s):

Lerina Aversano ◽

Gerardo Canfora ◽

Andrea De Lucia

Keyword(s):

Business Process ◽

Communication Technology ◽

Business Processes ◽

Business Process Reengineering ◽

Process Reengineering ◽

The Internet ◽

Legacy Systems ◽

Business Units ◽

Information And Communication ◽

The Web

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is defined as “the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve significant improvements of the performances, such as cost, quality, service, and speed” (Hammer & Champy, 1993). Most BPR projects aim at converting business organisations from hierarchical centralised structures to networked decentralised business units cooperating with one another. This conversion is assuming a strategic relevance as the Internet is changing radically business processes, not only because they are purposely reengineered, but also because the Internet and the information and communication technology, offer more convenient means of fulfilling their requirement.

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Formal Model of Business Processes Integrated with Business Rules

Information Systems Frontiers ◽

10.1007/s10796-018-9826-y ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 21 (5) ◽

pp. 1167-1185 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Krzysztof Kluza ◽

Grzegorz J. Nalepa

Keyword(s):

Business Processes ◽

Formal Model ◽

Business Rules

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Business rules specification and business processes modeling

Agricultural Economics (Zemědělská ekonomika) ◽

10.17221/2503-agricecon ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 55 (No. 1) ◽

pp. 20-24 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

I. Rábová

Keyword(s):

Process Model ◽

Large Scale ◽

Business Processes ◽

System Development ◽

Entire Body ◽

Business Rules ◽

Business Rule ◽

Policy Document ◽

Business Policy ◽

Body Of Knowledge

Up to date business is managed by large-scale different rules that regulate how the business acts and how it is structured. We find the rules in law, regulation, business policy document, procedures manual, system documentation, memoranda etc. These reference resources may provide the specific basis for a rule or offer a background, context or explanation of the business rule. In the recent years, it has been discovered that business rules constitute an entire body of knowledge that has not been adequately addressed in either the analysis or design phases of the information system development. Typically, business rules have been buried in the program code or in the database structures. The article deals with the business rules approach and rule technology and helps to identify the business and technical opportunities they afford to the company. It offers the business process model and its integration with business rules. This approach could provide business analysts with an essential approach to understanding, redesigning and communicating what really happens in the business processes (in agricultural area). It serves to understand the business impact of any change in small and medium-sized organizations. We use the UML notation and its business model extension.

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Performance trends for operational intelligence through value chain model

Journal of Advanced Computer Science & Technology ◽

10.14419/jacst.v5i2.5861 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 34 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Rajeev Kaula

Keyword(s):

Value Chain ◽

Business Processes ◽

Chain Model ◽

Business Rules ◽

Successful Management ◽

Business Operations ◽

A Value ◽

Performance Trends ◽

Operational Intelligence ◽

Business Competitiveness

Value chain is a successful management model for improving business competitiveness. A value chain based analytic approach facilitates meaningful grouping of business processes such that appropriate value from business operations can be derived. As organizations focus on competitive advantage and growth, a value chain derived operational intelligence provides insight to compete successfully in the marketplace. This paper outlines an approach to develop performance based value metrics in the form of analytic business rules for operational intelligence through the value chain model. The paper illustrates the concepts through a University value chain prototype which is implemented in Oracle’s PL/SQL language.

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