A Context-Aware Architecture for Realizing Business Process Adaptation Strategies Using Fuzzy Planning

Author(s):  
Leila Kord Toudeshki ◽  
Mir Ali Seyyedi ◽  
Afshin Salajegheh

Business competency emerges in flexibility and reliability of services that an enterprise provides. To reach that, executing business processes on a context-aware business process management suite which is equipped with monitoring, modeling and adaptation mechanisms and smart enough to react properly using adaptation strategies at runtime, are a major requisite. In this paper, a context-aware architecture is described to bring adaptation to common business process execution software. The architecture comes with the how-to-apply methodology and is established based on process standards like business process modeling notation (BPMN), business process execution language (BPEL), etc. It follows MAPE-K adaptation cycle in which the knowledge, specifically contextual information and their related semantic rules — as the input of adaptation unit — is modeled in our innovative context ontology, which is also extensible for domain-specific purposes. Furthermore, to support separation of concerns, we took apart event-driven adaptation requirements from process instances; these requirements are triggered based on ontology reasoning. Also, the architecture supports fuzzy-based planning and extensible adaptation realization mechanisms to face new or changing situations adequately. We characterized our work in comparison with related studies based on five key adaptation metrics and also evaluated it using an online learning management system case study.

Author(s):  
Matthias Kloppmann ◽  
Dieter Koenig ◽  
Simon Moser

This chapter introduces a set of languages intended to model and run business processes. The Business Process Modeling Notation 1.1 (BPMN) is a notation used to graphically depict business processes. BPMN is able to express choreographies, i.e. the cooperation of separate, autonomous business processes to jointly achieve a larger scenario. Since BPMN is only a notation, there is no specification for a meta-model that allows rendering BPMN choreographies into an executable form. This chapter describes how the Service Component Architecture (SCA) and the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) help to close that gap. BPMN, SCA and WS-BPEL can jointly be used and combined to model, deploy and execute business process choreographies. We will also integrate the related BPEL4People specification, since BPMN allows human ‘user tasks’, but WS-BPEL focuses only on automated business process. The authors argue that, based on these specifications, the dichotomy between modeling and execution can be addressed efficiently. In this chapter, we will show that a key aspect of the future of Business Process Management is to combine graphical modeling (via BPMN) with a precise specification of an executable business process (via WS-BPEL and related standards).


Author(s):  
Witold Abramowicz ◽  
Agata Filipowska ◽  
Monika Kaczmarek ◽  
Tomasz Kaczmarek

Semantic Business Process Management (SBPM) bridges the gap between business and IT by taking advantage of the Semantic Web technologies. The foundation for SBPM is the detailed ontological description of enterprise models. These models encompass also business processes taking place in enterprises. Within this chapter, we show how the process-oriented knowledge may be captured for the needs of SBPM. For this reason, we describe semantically enhanced Business Process Modeling Notation (sBPMN) being a conceptualization of one of the main process modeling notations with the fast growing popularity among the tool vendors, namely BPMN. The sBPMN ontology is based on the BPMN specification and may be used as a serialization format by the BPMN modeling tools, thus, making creation of annotations invisible to users. In this chapter, we also present an example of a process model description.


2004 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Kloppmann ◽  
Dieter König ◽  
Frank Leymann ◽  
Gerhard Pfau ◽  
Dieter Roller

ZusammenfassungMithilfe von Web Services und BPEL (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) können Geschäftsprozesse und deren Interaktion mit verschiedenen Partnern beschrieben werden. Zur Ausführung der Geschäftsprozesse finden Workflow Management Systeme Verwendung. Dieser Artikel beschäftigt sich, basierend auf den Grundlagen von Web Services und BPEL, mit der Implementierung eines Workflow Management Systems. Um den Anforderungen der Geschäftswelt zu genügen, muss ein Workflow Management System sowohl langlaufende, unterbrechbare als auch kurzlaufende Geschäftsprozesse mit ihren unterschiedlichen Quality-of-Service Eigenschaften unterstützen. Die Systeme müssen robust sein, sicher und hoch verfügbar. Der Artikel beschreibt die Implementierung eines J2EE-basierten Workflow Management System, das diesen Anforderungen entspricht. Dabei wird auf die Verwendung von Message Queuing Systemen und Datenbanken eingegangen, ebenso wie auf die Integration in einen Standard Application Server und die Verwendung dort zur Verfügung stehender Transaction Manager, EJB Container, People Directory und Deployment Infrastruktur.


Author(s):  
Hoa Khanh Dam ◽  
Aditya Ghose ◽  
Mohammad Qasim

Business processes have been widely becoming crucial assets of organisations across various industries and domains. The flexibility in dealing with changes when business processes are executed has significant impact on the success of an organisation's business operations, especially in the current ever-changing business environment. In this context, agent-based systems offer a promisingly powerful platform for business process execution. In this paper, the authors propose an agent-mediated platform for business processes with the aim to contribute to bridge the gap between business process management and agent-oriented development. They present a conceptual mapping method for a seamless transition from business process models in Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) to agent-oriented models in the Prometheus methodology, which is implemented using the ATLAS Transformation Language. The authors also developed an Eclipse-based plug-in which allows the designer to import BPMN models into the Eclipse-based Prometheus Design Tool.


Author(s):  
Daniela Wolff ◽  
Nishant Singh

The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is a process modeling language which uses standard control constructs to define a workflow. But, today‘s enterprises need to be agile to cope with increasing change, uncertainty and unpredictability. Therefore, automating agile business processes is still a challenge as they are normally knowledge intensive and can be planned to a limited degree. The execution order depends heavily on the case, which has to be performed. So instead of modeling all possible cases and situations which might occur in a knowledge intensive process we introduced an approach which uses semantic technologies and rules. Business rules can be utilized to allow for case-specific adaptation of process steps. A component was developed which allow during run-time rules to automatically detect the state of the case and to determine the necessary process adaptations.


Author(s):  
Vaggelis Ouzounis

Virtual enterprises (VEs) enable the deployment of distributed business processes among different partners in order to shorten development and manufacturing cycles, reduce time to market and operational costs, increase customer satisfaction, and operate on global scale and reach. Dynamic virtual enterprises are an emerging category of VE where the different partners are being selected dynamically during business process execution based on market-driven criteria and negotiation. In this chapter, we present an agent-based platform for the management of dynamic VEs. The main contributions of this approach are the distributed, autonomous agent-based business process management, the XML-based business process definition language, the flexible ontologies, and the dynamic negotiation and selection of partners based on virtual marketplaces. The presented platform has been fully developed using emerging agent and Internet standards like FIPA, MASIF, and XML.


Author(s):  
Terje Wahl ◽  
Guttorm Sindre

Evaluation of modelling languages is important both to be able to select the most suitable languages according to the needs and to improve existing languages. In this chapter, business process modeling notation (BPMN) is presented and analytically evaluated according to the semiotic quality framework. BPMN is a functionally oriented language well suited for modeling within the domain of business processes, and probably general processes outside of the business domain. The evaluation indicates that BPMN is easily learned for simple use, and business process diagrams (BPDs) are relatively easy to understand. Tools can fairly easily map BPDs into the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) (formerly known as BPEL4WS) format, but executable systems then require creation of Web services representing the activities in BPDs. An evaluation according to the Bunge-Wand-Weber (BWW) ontology is useful for finding ontological discrepancies, and the semiotic framework is useful for evaluating quality on a relatively general level. Thus, these methods complement each other.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-89
Author(s):  
Darío Picón ◽  
Fernando Fontana ◽  
Adriana Elba Martin

La Integración de Procesos de Negocio (Business Process Integration – BPI), utiliza una gran cantidad de servicios distribuidos, por lo que la comunicación entre estos servicios es clave para el buen funcionamiento del sistema. En este modelo de cooperación, la arquitectura Cliente-Servidor tradicional ya no es suficiente para la implementación de soluciones que soporten comunicación entre aplicaciones distribuidas, independientemente de la plataforma y del lenguaje de programación que utilizan estas aplicaciones. Por su parte, las Arquitecturas Orientadas a Servicios (Service Oriented Architectures - SOA) proveen una estructura que posibilita el modelado de procesos y conexiones interorganizacionales. Mientras que la Gestión de Procesos de Negocio (Business Process Management - BPM) es el conjunto de sistemas de software, herramientas y metodologías para gestionar tales requerimientos y, el Lenguaje de Ejecución de Procesos de Negocio (Business Process Execution Language - BPEL), es un lenguaje de orquestación de servicios que permite definir la forma en que cooperan entre sí los Servicios Web para alcanzar la lógica de negocio. En este escenario, existen buenas herramientas para asistir desde lo conceptual y desde lo práctico a la Integración de Procesos de Negocio aplicando Servicios Web. Entonces, la problemática se plantea al momento de vincular estas herramientas de manera apropiada para facilitar el proceso de definición e implementación de este tipo de sistemas y en particular, en el ámbito de las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PyMEs).En este trabajo se propone un modelo que hace posible el BPI mediante Servicios Web de una manera ágil y practica, facilitando su implementación. El mismo será aplicado metodológicamente a un Caso de Estudio en el dominio de las PyMEs, con el propósito de evaluar su eficiencia, evidenciar sus beneficios y hallar oportunidades de mejora.


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