A PROCESS-BASED APPROACH TO KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

This paper analyses the relationship between business process modelling, knowledge management and information systems development projects. The paper’s main objective is to present business rules as the encoded knowledge of corporate business practices. Further, it introduces a rule-based business activity meta-model as a repository in which business knowledge can be captured and traced from their origin in the business environment through to their implementation in information systems. The case study of the Croatian Ministry of Finance is presented, discussing the practical experience in integrating business process repository and organisational knowledge as the foundation for information system development

A PROCESS-BASED APPROACH TO KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

This paper analyses the relationship between business process modelling, knowledge management and information systems development projects. The paper’s main objective is to present business rules as the encoded knowledge of corporate business practices. Further, it introduces a rule-based business activity meta-model as a repository in which business knowledge can be captured and traced from their origin in the business environment through to their implementation in information systems. The case study of the Croatian Ministry of Finance is presented, discussing the practical experience in integrating business process repository and organisational knowledge as the foundation for information system development

Medical Virtual Public Services

The healthcare enterprises are very disconnected. This paper intends to propose a solution that will provide citizens, businesses and medical enterprises with improved access to medical virtual public services. Referred medical services are based on existing national medical Web services and which support medically required services provided by physicians and supplementary health care practitioners, laboratory services and diagnostic procedures, clinics and hospitals’ services. Requirements and specific rules of these medical services are considered, and personalization of user preferences will to be supported. The architecture is based on adaptable process management technologies, allowing for virtual services which are dynamically combined from existing national medical services. In this way, a comprehensive workflow process is set up, allowing for service-level agreements, an audit trail and explanation of the process to the end user. The process engine operates on top of a virtual repository, providing a high-level semantic view of information retrieved from heterogeneous information sources, such as national sources of medical services. The system relies on a security framework to ensure all high-level security requirements are met. System’s architecture is business oriented: it focuses on Service Oriented Architecture - SOA concepts, asynchronously combining Web services, Business Process Management – BPM rules and BPEL standards.Business Process Management, Service Oriented Architecture, Application Integration, Web services, information technologies, virtual repository, database.

AN APPAREL TRADE QUOTATION ARCHITECTURE BASED ON BPM AND SOA

Based on the analysis of problems and difficulties in apparel quotation system, this paper puts forward the combination of BPM and SOA as a new idea for analysis of apparel quotation system, according to their advantages in business goals and requirements analysis, and the corresponding services’ definition, extraction, optimization and integration. Through the combination, system flexibility, rapidity and accuracy could be achieved. The establishment of Service Repository according to the business requirements, is a crucial part in the architecture, however there are no definite rules for service extraction. In this paper, the detailed activities and steps, as well as a specific establishment case is illustrated. At last, architecture based on BPM and SOA for the apparel trade quotation is put forward, and its composition and implement are also analyzed

A Bayesian Reasoning Framework for On-Line Business Information Systems

We describe a Bayesian Reasoning Framework (BRF) that supports business rule operations for on-line information systems. BRF comprises a three-layer environment with business information systems at the top, a middle-ware Bayesian reasoning server, and a Bayesian reasoning engine at the bottom. The top and middle-ware layers communicate via SOAP/XML protocol, while the middle-ware and bottom layers communicate via a Tag-value protocol that fetches business rules from a central repository. BRF is built as a Bayesian Reasoning Agent and tested in a helpdesk system for assigning advisors to users for trouble-shooting in the operation of business information systems. BRF is modeled following a use-case methodology as well as an inference modeling that uses an assignation template from Common- KADS. The concept, design and implementation of BRF for real-world, on-line business information systems are the main contribution of this research project

Dynamic Validation Logic Generation using Business Rules Management Systems

Input validation in web applications represents an important part of their functionality. With proper validation we ensure that provided input data is in accordance with technical constraints, defined by the developer and with business-related constraints. In web development frameworks, validation logic is coupled with program code. If one validation rule is changed, application needs to be recompiled and redeployed. In this thesis we developed a system for input validation based on business rules management system. Validation rules are stored in central repository, separated from implementation of web applications. Thus, we have achieved a simple and transparent way of declaring validation logic in the form of declarative business rules as well as simplifed applications maintenance in case of changes in validation logic

Extraction of objects from legacy systems: an example using cobol legacy systems

In the last few years the interest in legacy information system has increased because of the escalating resources spent on their maintenance. On the other hand, the importance of extracting knowledge from business rules is becoming a crucial issue for modern business: sometime, because of inappropriate documentation, this knowledge is essentially only stored in the code. A way to improve their use and maintainability in the present environment is to migrate them into a new hardware / software platform reusing as much of their experience as possible during this process. This migration process promotes the population of a repository of reusable software components for their reuse in the development of a new system in that application domain or in the later maintenance processes. The actual trend in the migration of a legacy information system, is to exploit the potentialities of object oriented technology as a natural extension of earlier structured programming techniques. This is done by decomposing the program into several agent-like modules communicating via message passing, and providing to this system some object oriented key features. The key step is the "object isolation", i.e. the isolation of .groups of routines and related data items : to candidates in order to implement an abstraction in the application domain. The main idea of the object isolation method presented here is to extract information from the data flow, to cluster all the procedures on the base of their data accesses. It will examine "how" a procedure accesses the data in order to distinguish several types of accesses and to permit a better understanding of the functionality of the candidate objects. These candidate modules support the population of a repository of reusable software components that might be used as a basis of the process of evolution leading to a new object oriented system reusing the extracted objects