Bridging the Gap Between Business Process Models and Service Composition Specifications

Fundamental goals of any Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) include the flexible support and adaptability of business processes as well as improved business-IT alignment. Existing approaches, however, have failed to fully meet these goals. One of the major reasons for this deficiency is the gap that exists between business process models on the one hand and workflow specifications and implementations (e.g., service composition schemes) on the other hand. In practice, each of these two perspectives has to be regarded separately. In addition, even simple changes to one perspective (e.g. due to new regulations or organizational change) require error-prone, manual re-editing of the other one. Over time, this leads to degeneration and divergence of the respective models and specifications. This aggravates maintenance and makes expensive refactoring inevitable. This chapter presents a flexible approach for aligning business process models with workflow specifications. In order to maintain the complex dependencies that exist between high-level business process models (as used by domain experts) and technical workflow specifications (i.e., service composition schemas), respectively, (as used in IT departments) we introduce an additional model layer – the so-called system model. Furthermore, we explicitly document the mappings between the different levels (e.g., between business process model and system model). This simplifies model adoptions by orders of magnitudes when compared to existing approaches

Improving the Quality and Cost-effectiveness of Process-oriented, Service-driven Applications: Techniques for Enriching Business Process Models

A key objective of any Service-driven architectural approach is to improve the alignment between business and information technology (IT). Business process management, service composition, and service orchestration, play major roles in achieving this goal. In particular, they allow for the process-aware integration of business actors, business data, and business services. To optimize business-IT alignment and to achieve high business value, the business processes implemented in process-aware information systems (PAISs) must be defined by domain experts, and not by members of the IT department. In current practice, however, the information relevant for process execution is usually not captured at the required level of detail in business process models. In turn, this requires costly interactions between IT departments and domain experts during process implementation. To improve this situation, required execution information should be captured at a sufficient level of detail during business process design (front-loading). As another drawback, existing methods and tools for business process design do not consider available Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) artifacts such as technical service descriptions during process design (look-ahead). Both front-loading and look-ahead are not adequately supported by existing business process modeling tools. In particular, for many process aspects, appropriate techniques for specifying them at a sufficient level of detail during business process design are missing. This chapter presents techniques for enabling front-loading and look-ahead for selected process aspects and investigates how executable process models can be derived from business process models when enriched with additional information

Application Access Control using Enterprise Models

In this paper a framework for a model-driven control of identity management systems is presented. An important issue in today\u27s information systems security discussion addresses the effective authorisation of users. With established conceptual modelling languages the assignment of roles to the identity management software is an enormous organisational effort. To decrease administration costs we propose a direct connection between the identity management system and enterprise models which contain the organisational responsibilities. Therefore, we have created the modelling approach E³+WS available for the meta-CASE tool cubetto toolset and the Novell Identity Manager

Towards a Model-driven Approach to Control Identity Management Systems

Identity management systems require consolidating the diversity of many user repositories, the creation of roles and their assignment to the identity management software. To decrease administration costs we propose linking the identity management system to business process models which contain the organizational responsibilities. Therefore, we introduce a modeling grammar to model web-services that access existing enterprise models. We illustrate the usefulness of our approach with a pilot study conducted at the University of Muenster (Germany)

Erweiterung einer Modellierungsmethodik für serviceorientiertes Geschäftsprozessmanagement

The introduction of service-oriented architectures (SOA) in the enterprise context promises many advantages. For example, by composing existing services new capabilities can be provided quickly allowing a fast and agile reaction to changing market conditions. In order to support companies in a successful adoption of SOA, service-orientation must be integrated in their enterprise architecture. Many companies made high investments in the past modelling their enterprise architecture based on different modelling methods. The introduction of SOA is fostered if existing models can be reused and investments are preserved. Therefore, existing modelling methods must be extended by service-oriented concepts. This thesis extends the modelling method ARIS with concepts for service-oriented business process management. It contributes a graphical modelling language, which is tightly integrated with the existing ARIS modelling method. Besides a modelling language, a modelling method also consists of algorithms and applications using the content captured in the models. Therefore, this thesis develops three distinct applications based on the contributed modelling language. First, service discovery enables identifying services needed for business process automation. Second, the automated EPC to BPEL model transformation allows transforming a business process into an executable service orchestration. Third, semantic business process management formalises enterprise models so that they are machine processable. To evaluate the usefulness of the designed modelling language and the developed applications, two empirical case studies are conducted. The first case study evaluates the modelling language together with the applications service discovery and process transformation. The second case study evaluates the application semantic business process management. Both case studies demonstrate the usefulness and relevance of the modelling language as well as its applications. Hence, companies introducing service-oriented concepts can use the extended ARIS modelling method to document and analyse their service-oriented enterprise architecture.Serviceorientierte Architekturen (SOA) versprechen diverse Vorteile bei der Anwendung im Unternehmenskontext. So können z.B. durch Kombination unabhängiger Services neue Dienste kurzfristig bereitgestellt werden, was zu einer höheren Flexibilität und Agilität des Unternehmens führt. Damit Unternehmen das SOA-Konzept erfolgreich umsetzen können, muss die Serviceorientierung in die Unternehmensarchitektur integriert sein. Viele Unternehmen haben in der Vergangenheit bereits in die Modellierung ihrer Unternehmensarchitektur auf Basis verschiedener Modellierungsmethodiken investiert. Damit das SOA-Konzept auf breite Akzeptanz stößt, müssen die vorhandenen Modelle wiederverwendet werden. Dies wird erleichtert, wenn existierende Modellierungsmethodiken um serviceorientierte Modellierungskonzepte erweitert werden. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde die Modellierungsmethodik ARIS um Modellierungskonzepte für serviceorientierte Unternehmensarchitekturen erweitert. Dazu wurde eine konkrete grafische Modellierungssprache entwickelt und in ARIS integriert. Da eine Modellierungsmethodik neben einer Modellierungssprache auch Algorithmen und Verfahren zur Auswertung der erstellten Modelle umfasst, wurden in der vorliegenden Arbeit drei Anwendungen entwickelt. Mit der Servicesuche können zur Geschäftsprozessautomatisierung benötigte Services automatisch identifiziert werden. Mit der Geschäftsprozesstransformation können als EPK-Modell vorliegende Geschäftsprozesse automatisch in eine Serviceorchestrierung auf Basis von BPEL überführt werden. Mit dem semantischen Geschäftsprozessmanagement werden Geschäftsprozesse soweit formalisiert, dass sie durch maschinelle Verfahren auswertbar sind. Um die Nützlichkeit und Relevanz der Modellierungsmethodik samt der entwickelten Anwendungen zu evaluieren, wurden zwei empirische Fallstudien durchgeführt. In der ersten Fallstudie wurde die entwickelte Modellierungssprache sowie die Anwendungen Servicesuche und Geschäftsprozesstransformation untersucht. In Fallstudie zwei wurde die Anwendung semantisches Geschäftsprozessmanagement evaluiert. Beide Fallstudien haben die Nützlichkeit und Relevanz der Modellierungsmethodik und der Anwendungen bestätigt. Damit können Unternehmen auf Basis der in dieser Arbeit entwickelten Erweiterung von ARIS ihre serviceorientierte Unternehmensarchitektur dokumentieren und auswerten

A SOA Repository with Advanced Analysis Capabilities - Improving the Maintenance and Flexibility of Service-Oriented Applications

a service-oriented architecture (SOA), a change or shutdown of a particular service might have a significant impact on its consumers (e.g., IT systems). To effectively cope with such situations, the IT systems affected by a service change should be identified before actually applying the latter. For this purpose, a SOA repository with advanced analysis capabilities is needed. However, due to the numerous complex inter-dependencies between service providers and consumers, it is a challenging task to figure out which IT systems might be directly or indirectly affected by a service change and for which period of time this applies. The paper tackles this challenge and presents the design of an advanced SOA repository enriched with analysis capabilities. In particular, this repository enables automatic analyses to detect already existing problems (as-is analyses) as well as problems that might occur due to future service changes (what-if analyses). Respective analyses will foster the development of robust service-oriented applications

On the relevance of design knowledge for design-oriented business and information systems engineering : supplemental considerations and further application examples

This contribution represents a supplement to the article "On the Relevance of Design Knowledge for Design-Oriented Business and Information Systems Engineering — Conceptual Foundations, Application Example, and Implications" in the special issue on Science of Business and Information Systems Engineering of the journal Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) in 2010. It contains further application examples concerning the introduced reference framework for systemizing design knowledge. Besides the comprehensive documentation of design knowledge concerning eventdriven process chains (EPC) with the dedicated literary sources and an evaluation of the evidence of the provided statements, in this report the framework is furthermore applied for the documentation of design knowledge about the Process Grammar Approach, another technique for process design presented by Lee et al. in MIS Quarterly in 2008. Subsequently the results are discussed.Der vorliegende Beitrag dient als Anhang zum Artikel "On the Relevance of Design Knowledge for Design-Oriented Business and Information Systems Engineering — Conceptual Foundations, Application Example, and Implications", der in der Zeitschrift Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) zum Schwerpunktheft "Science of Business and Information Systems Engineering" im Jahr 2010 erschienen ist. Er ergänzt das dort aufgeführte Beispiel zur Anwendung des Bezugsrahmens zur Dokumentation von Gestaltungswissen. Der Bezugsrahmen wurde verwendet, um Gestaltungswissen zur Modellierungstechnik "Ereignisgesteuerte Prozesskette" (EPK) zu systematisieren, zu explizieren und hinsichtlich seiner Evidenz zu bewerten. Die dort gegebene Übersicht wird im vorliegenden Beitrag ergänzt. Darüber hinaus findet sich in diesem IWi-Heft ein weiteres Anwendungsbeispiel, das aufgrund von Platzrestriktionen im Journalartikel nicht präsentiert werden konnte. Der Bezugsrahmen dient hier der Systematisierung und Dokumentation von Gestaltungswissen zur Technik des Process Grammar Approach, der von Lee et al. 2008 im Journal MIS Quarterly präsentiert wurde. Weiterhin werden die erhobenen Ergebnisse im vorliegenden Beitrag diskutiert