Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Optimised editing of variable data documents via partial re-evaluation

With the advent of digital printing presses and the continued development of associated technologies, variable data printing (VDP) is becoming more and more common. VDP allows for a series of data instances to be bound to a single template document in order to produce a set of result document instances, each customized depending upon the data provided. As it gradually enters the mainstream of digital publishing there is a need for appropriate and powerful editing tools suitable for use by creative professionals. This thesis investigates the problem of representing variable data documents in an editable visual form, and focuses on the technical issues involved with supporting such an editing model. Using a document processing model where the document is produced from a data set and an appropriate programmatic transform, this thesis considers an interactive editor developed to allow visual manipulation of the result documents. It shows how the speed of the reprocessing necessary in such an interactive editing scenario can be increased by selectively re-evaluating only the required parts of the transformation, including how these pieces of the transformation can be identified and subsequently re-executed. The techniques described are demonstrated using a simplified document processing model that closely resembles variable data document frameworks. A workable editor is also presented that builds on this processing model and illustrates its advantages. Finally, an analysis of the performance of the proposed framework is undertaken including a comparison to a standard processing pipeline

Optimised editing of variable data documents via partial re-evaluation

With the advent of digital printing presses and the continued development of associated technologies, variable data printing (VDP) is becoming more and more common. VDP allows for a series of data instances to be bound to a single template document in order to produce a set of result document instances, each customized depending upon the data provided. As it gradually enters the mainstream of digital publishing there is a need for appropriate and powerful editing tools suitable for use by creative professionals. This thesis investigates the problem of representing variable data documents in an editable visual form, and focuses on the technical issues involved with supporting such an editing model. Using a document processing model where the document is produced from a data set and an appropriate programmatic transform, this thesis considers an interactive editor developed to allow visual manipulation of the result documents. It shows how the speed of the reprocessing necessary in such an interactive editing scenario can be increased by selectively re-evaluating only the required parts of the transformation, including how these pieces of the transformation can be identified and subsequently re-executed. The techniques described are demonstrated using a simplified document processing model that closely resembles variable data document frameworks. A workable editor is also presented that builds on this processing model and illustrates its advantages. Finally, an analysis of the performance of the proposed framework is undertaken including a comparison to a standard processing pipeline