Compiling Business Process Models into Executable Code

Author(s):  
Cesare Pautasso

Model-driven architecture (MDA), design and transformation techniques can be applied with success to the domain of business process modeling (BPM) with the goal of making the vision of business-driven development a reality. This chapter is centered on the idea of compiling business process models for executing them, and how this idea has been driving the design of the JOpera for Eclipse workflow management tool. JOpera presents users with a simple, graph-based process modeling language with a visual representation of both control and data-flow aspects. As an intermediate representation, the graphs are converted into Event-Condition-Action rules, which are further compiled into Java bytecode for efficient execution. These transformations of process models are performed by the JOpera process compiler in a completely transparent way, where the generated executable artefacts are kept hidden from users at all times (i.e., even for debugging process executions, which is done by augmenting the original, high level notation). The author evaluates his approach by discussing how using a compiler has opened up the several possibilities for performing optimization on the generated code and also simplified the design the corresponding workflow engine architecture.

Author(s):  
Sven Feja ◽  
Sören Witt ◽  
Andreas Speck

Business process models (BPM) are widely used for specification of software systems, as the basis for model driven software development. Hence, it is crucial to ensure that these BPMs fulfill the requirements they have to comply with. These requirements may originate from various domains. Many may be considered non-functional requirements. They are affecting privacy, security, as well as compliance or economic aspects. In order to avoid error-prone manual checking, automated checking techniques should be applied wherever possible. This requires expressing requirements in a formal manner. The common textual representations for such formal requirements are not well accepted in the modeling domain, since they are settled on a lower level of abstraction, compared to BPMs. In this chapter, the authors present the Business Application Modeler (BAM), which integrates formal requirement specification and automated checking with process modeling. On the one hand BAM supports different notations for process modeling. On the other hand a graphical notation, called G-CTL, for the formal specification of requirements is provided. G-CTL is based on temporal logic, and statements are expressed on the level of abstraction of the graphical process models. Furthermore BAM provides the ability to define selective views on process models. This allows complex domain specific annotations of processes as well as the assignment of responsibilities regarding functional domains. Moreover, BAM integrates into common requirements engineering processes.


Author(s):  
Evellin Cardoso ◽  
João Paulo A. Almeida ◽  
Renata S. S. Guizzardi ◽  
Giancarlo Guizzardi

While traditional approaches in business process modeling tend to focus on “how” the business processes are performed (adopting a behavioral description in which business processes are described in terms of procedural aspects), in goal-oriented business process modeling, the proposals strive to extend traditional business process methodologies by providing a dimension of intentionality to business processes. One of the key difficulties in enabling one to model goal-oriented processes concerns the identification or elicitation of goals. This paper reports on a case study conducted in a Brazilian hospital, which obtained several goal models represented in i*/Tropos, each of which correspond to a business process also modeled in the scope of the study. NFR catalogues were helpful in goal elicitation, uncovering goals that did not come up during previous interviews prior to these catalogues’ use.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1515-1535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomas Skersys ◽  
Kestutis Kapocius ◽  
Rimantas Butleris ◽  
Tomas Danikauskas

Approaches for the analysis and specification of business vocabularies and rules are relevant topics in both Business Process Management and Information Systems Development disciplines. However, in common practice of Information Systems Development, the Business modeling activities still are of mostly empiric nature. In this paper, aspects of the approach for semi-automatic extraction of business vocabularies (BV) from business process models (BPM) are presented. The approach is based on novel business modeling-level OMG standards ?Business Process Model and Notation? (BPMN) and ?Semantics for Business Vocabularies and Business Rules? (SBVR), thus contributing to OMG?s vision of Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) and to model-driven development in general. The discussed extraction approach is evaluated against fully-automatic BPMN BPM ? SBVR BV transformation that has been developed in parallel to the presented work.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Hilman Nuril Hadi ◽  
Tri Astoto Kurniawan ◽  
Ismiarta Aknuranda

BPMN has become the standard of business process modeling indescribing the existing series of business process. By engaging BPMN, an analystwould possibly able to model the whole business process activities in whichhe/she may analyze business process upon design time. It can be done byanalyzing the structure, behavior, or semantic of process model. In certaincondition one may ask a question what would the effects of the process be if itwere to be executed up to this point?. However, it cannot be solved with onlygraphical notation, but with its semantics. In practice, several modeling tools stilldo not provide a feature for managing information regarding the effects/resultsin the business process model. In fact, analysts should be supported with a toolin order to semantically enrich a process model with its effects. This articledescribes effect annotation semantically towards activity in the BPMN modelincluding the rules in representing its effects. The effect annotation will be suitedtowards activity type (atomic and compound activities). The outcomes of plugin development of eclipse BPMN2 modeler for representing semantic effect arealso described in this paper.


Author(s):  
Sven Feja ◽  
Sören Witt ◽  
Andreas Speck

Business process models (BPM) are widely used for specification of software systems, as the basis for model driven software development. Hence, it is crucial to ensure that these BPMs fulfill the requirements they have to comply with. These requirements may originate from various domains. Many may be considered non-functional requirements. They are affecting privacy, security, as well as compliance or economic aspects. In order to avoid error-prone manual checking, automated checking techniques should be applied wherever possible. This requires expressing requirements in a formal manner. The common textual representations for such formal requirements are not well accepted in the modeling domain, since they are settled on a lower level of abstraction, compared to BPMs. In this chapter, the authors present the Business Application Modeler (BAM), which integrates formal requirement specification and automated checking with process modeling. On the one hand BAM supports different notations for process modeling. On the other hand a graphical notation, called G-CTL, for the formal specification of requirements is provided. G-CTL is based on temporal logic, and statements are expressed on the level of abstraction of the graphical process models. Furthermore BAM provides the ability to define selective views on process models. This allows complex domain specific annotations of processes as well as the assignment of responsibilities regarding functional domains. Moreover, BAM integrates into common requirements engineering processes.


Author(s):  
Gang Xue ◽  
Zhongwei Wu ◽  
Kun Zhang ◽  
Shaowen Yao

Up to the present, the modeling of business process manly focuses on the flow-control perspective, regardless of the logic relationships between models. Although the value of business rules in business process modeling has been recognized by many organizations, it is not fully clear how business rules can be used to model business process models. Business rules are powerful representation forms that can potentially define the semantics of business process models and business vocabulary. This chapter is committed to model the business process based on SBVR, then use the method mentioned below to transform a plain text rule statement into BPMN files.


Author(s):  
Joseph Barjis

Security requirements must be tackled early in software design and embedded in corresponding business process models. As a blueprint for software design, business process models complemented with security requirements will prevent many security breaches. To accomplish secure business process modeling, the underlying method must adhere to certain capabilities and capture actions, actor roles, and interactions. The resultant models should lend themselves to automatic analysis (simulation) to ensure captured security requirements are correctly aligned with the process flow. Thus, the tradeoff between the level of security and business performance can be studied before actual software design. Since unauthorized actions cause security breaches, the software the system’s social setting could be a cradle for defining security requirements. Security requirements can be identified based on the roles, authorities, and obligations of the social actors using the system. This paper introduces a method for security embedded business process modeling. The proposed method draws on two well-tested theoretical foundations—enterprise ontology and organizational semiotics.


2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 14-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rong Liu ◽  
Frederick Y. Wu ◽  
Santhosh Kumaran

Much of the prior work in business process modeling is activity-centric. Recently, an information-centric approach has emerged, where a business process is modeled as the interacting lifecycles of business entities. The benefits of this approach are documented in a number of case studies. In this paper, the authors formalize the information-centric approach and derive the relationships between the two approaches. The authors formally define the notion of a business entity, provide an algorithm to transform an activity-centric model into an information-centric process model, and demonstrate the equivalence between these two models. Further, they show the value of transforming from the activity-centric paradigm to the information-centric paradigm in business process componentization and Service-Oriented Architecture design and also provide an empirical evaluation.


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