On Enabling Integrated Process Compliance with Semantic Constraints in Process Management Systems

Key to broad use of process management systems (PrMS) in practice is their ability to foster and ease the implementation, execution, monitoring, and adaptation of business processes while still being able to ensure robust and error-free process enactment. To meet these demands a variety of mechanisms has been developed to prevent errors at the structural level (e.g., deadlocks). In many application domains, however, processes often have to comply with business level rules and policies (i.e., semantic constraints) as well. Hence, to ensure error-free executions at the semantic level, PrMS need certain control mechanisms for validating and ensuring the compliance with semantic constraints. In this paper, we discuss fundamental requirements for a comprehensive support of semantic constraints in PrMS. Moreover, we provide a survey on existing approaches and discuss to what extent they are able to meet the requirements and which challenges still have to be tackled. In order to tackle the particular challenge of providing integrated compliance support over the process lifecycle, we introduce the SeaFlows framework. The framework introduces a behavioural level view on processes which serves a conceptual process representation for constraint specification approaches. Further, it provides general compliance criteria for static compliance validation but also for dealing with process changes. Altogether, the SeaFlows framework can serve as formal basis for realizing integrated support of semantic constraints in PrMS

Declarative techniques for modeling and mining business processes..

Organisaties worden vandaag de dag geconfronteerd met een schijnbare tegenstelling. Hoewel ze aan de ene kant veel geld geïnvesteerd hebben in informatiesystemen die hun bedrijfsprocessen automatiseren, lijken ze hierdoor minder in staat om een goed inzicht te krijgen in het verloop van deze processen. Een gebrekkig inzicht in de bedrijfsprocessen bedreigt hun flexibiliteit en conformiteit. Flexibiliteit is belangrijk, omdat organisaties door continu wijzigende marktomstandigheden gedwongen worden hun bedrijfsprocessen snel en soepel aan te passen. Daarnaast moeten organisaties ook kunnen garanderen dan hun bedrijfsvoering conform is aan de wetten, richtlijnen, en normen die hun opgelegd worden. Schandalen zoals de recent aan het licht gekomen fraude bij de Franse bank Société Générale toont het belang aan van conformiteit en flexibiliteit. Door het afleveren van valse bewijsstukken en het omzeilen van vaste controlemomenten, kon één effectenhandelaar een risicoloze arbitragehandel op prijsverschillen in futures omtoveren tot een risicovolle, speculatieve handel in deze financiële derivaten. De niet-ingedekte, niet-geautoriseerde posities bleven lange tijd verborgen door een gebrekkige interne controle, en tekortkomingen in de IT beveiliging en toegangscontrole. Om deze fraude in de toekomst te voorkomen, is het in de eerste plaats noodzakelijk om inzicht te verkrijgen in de operationele processen van de bank en de hieraan gerelateerde controleprocessen. In deze tekst behandelen we twee benaderingen die gebruikt kunnen worden om het inzicht in de bedrijfsprocessen te verhogen: procesmodellering en procesontginning. In het onderzoek is getracht technieken te ontwikkelen voor procesmodellering en procesontginning die declaratief zijn. Procesmodellering process modeling is de manuele constructie van een formeel model dat een relevant aspect van een bedrijfsproces beschrijft op basis van informatie die grotendeels verworven is uit interviews. Procesmodellen moeten adequate informatie te verschaffen over de bedrijfsprocessen om zinvol te kunnen worden gebruikt bij hun ontwerp, implementatie, uitvoering, en analyse. De uitdaging bestaat erin om nieuwe talen voor procesmodellering te ontwikkelen die adequate informatie verschaffen om deze doelstelling realiseren. Declaratieve procestalen maken de informatie omtrent bedrijfsbekommernissen expliciet. We karakteriseren en motiveren declaratieve procestalen, en nemen we een aantal bestaande technieken onder de loep. Voorts introduceren we een veralgemenend raamwerk voor declaratieve procesmodellering waarbinnen bestaande procestalen gepositioneerd kunnen worden. Dit raamwerk heet het EM-BrA�CE raamwerk, en staat voor `Enterprise Modeling using Business Rules, Agents, Activities, Concepts and Events'. Het bestaat uit een formele ontolgie en een formeel uitvoeringsmodel. Dit raamwerk legt de ontologische basis voor de talen en technieken die verder in het doctoraat ontwikkeld worden. Procesontginning process mining is de automatische constructie van een procesmodel op basis van de zogenaamde event logs uit informatiesystemen. Vandaag de dag worden heel wat processen door informatiesystemen in event logs geregistreerd. In event logs vindt men in chronologische volgorde terug wie, wanneer, welke activiteit verricht heeft. De analyse van event logs kan een accuraat beeld opleveren van wat er zich in werkelijkheid afspeelt binnen een organisatie. Om bruikbaar te zijn, moeten de ontgonnen procesmodellen voldoen aan criteria zoals accuraatheid, verstaanbaarheid, en justifieerbaarheid. Bestaande technieken voor procesontginning focussen vooral op het eerste criterium: accuraatheid. Declaratieve technieken voor procesontginning richten zich ook op de verstaanbaarheid en justifieerbaarheid van de ontgonnen modellen. Declaratieve technieken voor procesontginning zijn meer verstaanbaar omdat ze pogen procesmodellen voor te stellen aan de hand van declaratieve voorstellingsvormen. Daarenboven verhogen declaratieve technieken de justifieerbaarheid van de ontgonnen modellen. Dit komt omdat deze technieken toelaten de apriori kennis, inductieve bias, en taal bias van een leeralgoritme in te stellen. Inductief logisch programmeren (ILP) is een leertechniek die inherent declaratief is. In de tekst tonen we hoe proces mining voorgesteld kan worden als een ILP classificatieprobleem, dat de logische voorwaarden leert waaronder gebeurtenis plaats vindt (positief event) of niet plaatsvindt (een negatief event). Vele event logs bevatten van nature geen negatieve events die aangeven dat een bepaalde activiteit niet kon plaatsvinden. Om aan dit probleem tegemoet te komen, beschrijven we een techniek om artificiële negatieve events te genereren, genaamd AGNEs (process discovery by Artificially Generated Negative Events). De generatie van artificiële negatieve events komt neer op een configureerbare inductieve bias. De AGNEs techniek is geïmplementeerd als een mining plugin in het ProM raamwerk. Door process discovery voor te stellen als een eerste-orde classificatieprobleem op event logs met artificiële negatieve events, kunnen de traditionele metrieken voor het kwantificeren van precisie (precision) en volledigheid (recall) toegepast worden voor het kwantificeren van de precisie en volledigheid van een procesmodel ten opzicht van een event log. In de tekst stellen we twee nieuwe metrieken voor. Deze nieuwe metrieken, in combinatie met bestaande metrieken, werden gebruikt voor een uitgebreide evaluatie van de AGNEs techniek voor process discovery in zowel een experimentele als een praktijkopstelling.

Enterprise modelling framework for dynamic and complex business environment: socio-technical systems perspective

The modern business environment is characterised by dynamism and ambiguity. The causes include global economic change, rapid change requirements, shortened development life cycles and the increasing complexity of information technology and information systems (IT/IS). However, enterprises have been seen as socio-technical systems. The dynamic complex business environment cannot be understood without intensive modelling and simulation. Nevertheless, there is no single description of reality, which has been seen as relative to its context and point of view. Human perception is considered an important determinant for the subjectivist view of reality. Many scholars working in the socio-technical systems and enterprise modelling domains have conceived the holistic sociotechnical systems analysis and design possible using a limited number of procedural and modelling approaches. For instance, the ETHICS and Human-centred design approaches of socio-technical analysis and design, goal-oriented and process-oriented modelling of enterprise modelling perspectives, and the Zachman and DoDAF enterprise architecture frameworks all have limitations that can be improved upon, which have been significantly explained in this thesis. [Continues.

An object-oriented approach to the translation between MOF Metaschemas

Since the 1960s, many formal languages have been developed in order to allow software engineers to specify conceptual models and to design software artifacts. A few of these languages, such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML), have become widely used standards. They employ notations and concepts that are not readily understood by "domain experts," who understand the actual problem domain and are responsible for finding solutions to problems.The Object Management Group (OMG) developed the Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules (SBVR) specification as a first step towards providing a language to support the specification of "business vocabularies and rules." The function of SBVR is to capture business concepts and business rules in languages that are close enough to ordinary language, so that business experts can read and write them, and formal enough to capture the intended semantics and present them in a form that is suitable for engineering the automation of the rules.The ultimate goal of business rules approaches is to build software systems directly from vocabularies and rules. One way of reaching this goal, within the context of model-driven architecture (MDA), is to transform SBVR models into UML models. OMG also notes the need for a reverse engineering transformation between UML schemas and SBVR vocabularies and rules in order to validate UML schemas. This thesis proposes an automatic approach to translation between UML schemas and SBVR vocabularies and rules, and vice versa. It consists of the application of a new generic schema translation approach to the particular case of UML and SBVR.The main contribution of the generic approach is the extensive use of object-oriented concepts in the definition of translation mappings, particularly the use of operations (and their refinements) and invariants, both formalized in the Object Constraint Language (OCL). Translation mappings can be used to check that two schemas are translations of each other, and to translate one into the other, in either direction. Translation mappings are declaratively defined by means of preconditions, postconditions and invariants, and they can be implemented in any suitable language. The approach leverages the object-oriented constructs embedded in Meta Object Facility (MOF) metaschemas to achieve the goals of object-oriented software development in the schema translation problem.The generic schema translation approach and its application to UML schemas and SBVR vocabularies and rules is fully implemented in the UML-based Specification Environment (USE) tool and validated by a case study based on the conceptual schema of the Digital Bibliography & Library Project (DBLP) system

Systemic approach and decision process for sustainability in chemical engineering: Application to computer aided product design

Dans un contexte de prise en compte croissante des enjeux environnementaux, l'industrie de la chimie et des procédés se retrouve confrontée à des problématiques de substitution de molécules. Les méthodes de formulation inverse, qui consistent en la recherche assistée par ordinateur de molécules satisfaisant un ensemble de contraintes, répondent de manière efficace à ces problématiques. A partir de l'analyse systémique des usages et fonctionnalités nécessaires dans ce contexte, nous développons un outil logiciel de formulation inverse mettant en oeuvre un algorithme génétique. Celui-ci est capable d'explorer un espace de solutions plus vaste en considérant les mélanges et non les molécules seules. Par ailleurs, il propose une définition des problèmes très flexible qui permet la recherche efficiente de molécules issues de filières renouvelables. En s'appuyant sur l'ingénierie système et l'ingénierie d'entreprise, nous proposons un processus formel de prise de décision pour la substitution de produit dans un contexte industriel. Ce processus de décision multi-critères englobe les phases de définition des exigences, de génération de solutions alternatives, de sélection de la meilleure alternative et de mise en oeuvre du produit. Il utilise une approche dirigée par les modèles et des techniques de prises de décision qui garantissent un alignement opérationnel en complément de l'alignement stratégique. A travers un cas d'étude, nous montrons comment l'utilisation conjointe de notre outil de recherche par formulation inverse et de notre processus de décision permet une démarche environnementale de substitution de produit à la fois efficiente et conforme à la réalité de l'entreprise. ABSTRACT : In a context where environmental issues are increasingly taken into account, the chemical related industry faces situations imposing a chemical product substitution. Computer aided molecular design methods, which consist in finding molecules satisfying a set of constraints, are well adapted to these situations. Using a systemic analysis of the needs and uses linked to this context, we develop a computer aided product design tool implementing a genetic algorithm. It is able to explore a wider solution space thanks to a flexible molecular framework. Besides, by allowing a very flexible setting of the problem to be solved, it enables the search of molecules sourced from renewable resources. Based on concepts from system and enterprise engineering, we formalize a decision making process dedicated to the product substitution in an industrial context. This multi-criteria decision process includes the phases of the requirements definition, of the generation of alternative solutions, of the selection of the best alternative and of the product application. It uses a model driven approach and decision making techniques that guaranty an operational alignment in addition to the strategic alignment across the chemical enterprise. Through a case study, we expose how the combination of our computer aided product design tool and our decision making process enables an environmentally compliant approach of product substitution which is both efficient and in adequacy with enterprise context

SeaFlows – A Compliance Checking Framework for Supporting the Process Lifecycle

Compliance-awareness is undoubtedly of utmost importance for companies nowadays. Even though an automated approach to compliance checking and enforcement has been advocated in recent literature as a means to tame the high costs for compliance-awareness, the potential of automated mechanisms for supporting business process compliance is not yet depleted. Business process compliance deals with the question whether business processes are designed and executed in harmony with imposed regulations. In this thesis, we propose a compliance checking framework for automating business process compliance verification within process management systems (PrMSs). Such process-aware information systems constitute an ideal environment for the systematic integration of automated business process compliance checking since they bring together different perspectives on a business process and provide access to process data. The objective of this thesis is to devise a framework that enhances PrMSs with compliance checking functionality. As PrMSs enable both the design and the execution of business processes, the designated compliance checking framework must accommodate mechanisms to support these different phases of the process lifecycle. A compliance checking framework essentially consists of two major building blocks: a compliance rule language to capture compliance requirements in a checkable manner and compliance checking mechanisms for verification of process models and process instances. Key to the practical application of a compliance checking framework will be its ability to provide comprehensive and meaningful compliance diagnoses. Based on the requirements analysis and meta-analyses, we developed the SeaFlows compliance checking framework proposed in this thesis. We introduce the compliance rule graph (CRG) language for modeling declarative compliance rules. The language provides modeling primitives with a notation based on nodes and edges. A compliance rule is modeled by defining a pattern of activity executions activating a compliance rule and consequences that have to apply once a rule becomes activated. In order to enable compliance verification of process models and process instances, the CRG language is operationalized. Key to this approach is the exploitation of the graph structure of CRGs for representing compliance states of the respective CRGs in a transparent and interpretable manner. For that purpose, we introduce execution states to mark CRG nodes in order to indicate which parts of the CRG patterns can be observed in a process execution. By providing rules to alter the markings when a new event is processed, we enable to update the compliance state for each observed event. The beauty of our approach is that both design and runtime can be supported using the same mechanisms. Thus, no transformation of compliance rules in different representations for process model verification or for compliance monitoring becomes necessary. At design time, the proposed approach can be applied to explore a process model and to detect which compliance states with respect to imposed CRGs a process model is able to yield. At runtime, the effective compliance state of process instances can be monitored taking also the future predefined in the underlying process model into account. As compliance states are encoded based on the CRG structure, fine-grained and intelligible compliance diagnoses can be derived in each detected compliance state. Specifically, it becomes possible to provide feedback not only on the general enforcement of a compliance rule but also at the level of particular activations of the rule contained in a process. In case of compliance violations, this can explain and pinpoint the source of violations in a process. In addition, measures to satisfy a compliance rule can be easily derived that can be seized for providing proactive support to comply. Altogether, the SeaFlows compliance checking framework proposed in this thesis can be embedded into an overall integrated compliance management framework

Enabling Multi-Perspective Business Process Compliance

A particular challenge for any enterprise is to ensure that its business processes conform with compliance rules, i.e., semantic constraints on the multiple perspectives of the business processes. Compliance rules stem, for example, from legal regulations, corporate best practices, domain-specific guidelines, and industrial standards. In general, compliance rules are multi-perspective, i.e., they not only restrict the process behavior (i.e. control flow), but may refer to other process perspectives (e.g. time, data, and resources) and the interactions (i.e. message exchanges) of a business process with other processes as well. The aim of this thesis is to improve the specification and verification of multi-perspective process compliance based on three contributions: 1. The extended Compliance Rule Graph (eCRG) language, which enables the visual modeling of multi-perspective compliance rules. Besides control flow, the latter may refer to the time, data, resource, and interaction perspectives of a business process. 2. A framework for multi-perspective monitoring of the compliance of running processes with a given set of eCRG compliance rules. 3. Techniques for verifying business process compliance with respect to the interaction perspective. In particular, we consider compliance verification for cross-organizational business processes, for which solely incomplete process knowledge is available. All contributions were thoroughly evaluated through proof-of-concept prototypes, case studies, empirical studies, and systematic comparisons with related works

Langage contrôlé pour la spécification des règles métier dans le contexte de la modélisation des systèmes d'information

Our thesis focuses on controlled natural languages (CNL) for software engineering. It aims at facilitating the adoption of the business rule approach (BRA) by companies by creating a CNL in order to help business experts in the specification of their business rules. Our solution will allow reducing the semantic gap between business experts and system experts to meet not only the need for mutual understanding between them but also to achieve an automatic transfer of the description of business rules to information systems (IS). The CNL that we have created will also ensure the consistency and the traceability of these rules together with their implementationNotre thèse s’inscrit dans le cadre des langages contrôlés pour le génie logiciel. Elle a pour but de faciliter l’adoption de l’approche par règles métier (ARM) par les entreprises en créant un langage contrôlé en vue d’aider à la spécification des règles métier par les experts métier. Notre solution va permettre de réduire la distance sémantique entre les experts métier et les experts système afin de répondre non seulement au besoin d’intercompréhension entre ces derniers mais aussi pour réaliser un transfert automatique de la description des règles métier vers les systèmes d’information (SI). Ce langage contrôlé que nous avons créé permettra d’assurer en plus la consistance et la traçabilité de ces règles avec leur implantatio

Semantic Business Process Modeling

This book presents a process-oriented business modeling framework based on semantic technologies. The framework consists of modeling languages, methods, and tools that allow for semantic modeling of business motivation, business policies and rules, and business processes. Quality of the proposed modeling framework is evaluated based on the modeling content of SAP Solution Composer and several real-world business scenarios