Exploiting rules and processes for increasing flexibility in service composition

Recent trends in the use of service oriented architecture for designing, developing, managing, and using distributed applications have resulted in an increasing number of independently developed and physically distributed services. These services can be discovered, selected and composed to develop new applications and to meet emerging user requirements. Service composition is generally defined on the basis of business processes in which the underlying composition logic is guided by specifying control and data flows through Web service interfaces. User demands as well as the services themselves may change over time, which leads to replacing or adjusting the composition logic of previously defined processes. Coping with change is still one of the fundamental problems in current process based composition approaches. In this paper, we exploit declarative and imperative design styles to achieve better flexibility in service composition

Towards a flexible service integration through separation of business rules

Driven by dynamic market demands, enterprises are continuously exploring collaborations with others to add value to their services and seize new market opportunities. Achieving enterprise collaboration is facilitated by Enterprise Application Integration and Business-to-Business approaches that employ architectural paradigms like Service Oriented Architecture and incorporate technological advancements in networking and computing. However, flexibility remains a major challenge related to enterprise collaboration. How can changes in demands and opportunities be reflected in collaboration solutions with minimum time and effort and with maximum reuse of existing applications? This paper proposes an approach towards a more flexible integration of enterprise applications in the context of service mediation. We achieve this by combining goal-based, model-driven and serviceoriented approaches. In particular, we pay special attention to the separation of business rules from the business process of the integration solution. Specifying the requirements as goal models, we separate those parts which are more likely to evolve over time in terms of business rules. These business rules are then made executable by exposing them as Web services and incorporating them into the design of the business process.\ud Thus, should the business rules change, the business process remains unaffected. Finally, this paper also provides an evaluation of the flexibility of our solution in relation to the current work in business process flexibility research

Business Process Model Reuse In A Multi-Channel / Multi-Product Environment–Problem Identification And Tentative Design

Business Process Modeling has become a common activity in organisations. However, as the number of process models increases, so too does the number of duplicated models increase and the level of process model reuse has been found to be surprisingly low. In organisations which operate in an environment with multiple channels, products and customer types, complete process model reuse becomes especially challenging. Without a well-defined approach, such an environment could easily result in dozens of slight variations of what is essentially the same process which will lead to future model and repository management challenges. In response to this problem this paper reviews the literature of complete business process reuse in a multi-channel / multi-product environment. We find that there is a clear gap in the literature in terms of practical solutions that address the problem described but were able to distil five practices that can increase complete model reuse. This review and the practices described will help practitioners grappling with these challenges and paves the way for further needed research on this problem

Modeling Service Choreographies with Rule-enhanced Business Processes

The participation at EDOC 2010 was overwhelming in every positive sense, and I am very thankful to the committee for this award. Our presentation was received highly positive and triggered several questions. The questions were mainly about the relations of our work with the use of ontology and vocabulary representation languages, and our plans for developing executable models rather than generating code from models. In fact, this was already in line with our previous plans and research directions. Some of these discussions even continued during the following days. In particular, we had plans for two concrete collaborations. One is related to the development of a formal semantics of the rBPMN languages by using process algebra, that is, by using the mCRL2 language in particular. Moreover, we also created a common plan for integration of semi-structured English language for defining business rules and vocabularies. This will also allow us to have a more effective way to capture rules in rBPMN process models. Moreover, our presentation of the rBPMN editor, as an practical implementation tool for the work with the rBPMN language received a special attention, and several researchers have already approached us to establish research collaboration and/or to use our tool, which is now publically available. The overall experience was also extremely valuable. The program of the conference covered nearly all of the diverse topics in enterprise computing. That is, the selected papers cover engineering aspects in many phases of development life cycle of enterprise systems, especially those designed for distributed environments. I have also delivered a keynote at the VORTE 2010 workshop with the audience with was the largest of all workshop keynotes at the conference. The participants very positively received my insights. In a very interactive session, we discussed some of the main research challenges important for better integration of business rules and business process modeling languages.The research community has so far mainly focused on the problem of modeling of service orchestrations in the domain of service composition, while modeling of service choreographies has attracted less attention. The following challenges in choreography modeling are tackled in this paper: i) choreography models are not well-connected with the underlying business vocabulary models. ii) there is limited support for decoupling parts of business logic from complete choreography models. This reduces dynamic changes of choreographies; iii) choreography models contain redundant elements of shared business logic, which might lead to an inconsistent implementation and incompatible behavior. Our proposal – rBPMN – is an extension of a business process modeling language with rule and choreography modeling support. rBPMN is defined by weaving the metamodels of the Business Process Modeling Notation and REWERSE Rule Markup Language. To evaluate our proposal, we use service-interaction patterns and compare our approach with related solutions

Eine Literaturanalyse zur Integration von Business Rules und Business Process Management

Business Rules (BR) und Business Process Management (BPM) sind eng miteinander verzahnt. Dennoch gibt es nur vergleichsweise wenige Forschungsbeiträge, die sich mit dem Grad der Integration beider Domänen befassen. Auf der Basis des Six-Core-Elements-BPM-Framework wird die Integration von Business Rules mit dem BPM anhand einer State-of-the-Art-Analyse der Literatur untersucht und evaluiert. Die Analyse deckt aktuelle und zukünftig mögliche Entwicklungen auf und stellt im Besonderen einen starken Fokus auf die Erforschung methodischer Ansätze fest. Während das Design und die Implementierung von BR und Geschäftsprozessen im Mittelpunkt stehen, werden organisationale Faktoren wie People und Culture kaum betrachtet. Auch kann ein strategischer Bezug der Integration beider Domänen kaum festgestellt werden

Inzicht in de wijziging van een bedrijfsregel

Door de invoering van Sepa is het formaat van bankrekeningnummers veranderd: ze zijn langer geworden. Het onderzoek is erop gericht om inzicht te krijgen in de impact van een bedrijfsregelwijziging op het bedrijfsproces, het informatiesysteem en de data. Bedrijfsregels worden impliciet geïmplementeerd in het bedrijfsproces en het informatiesysteem, waardoor deze moeilijk kunnen worden aangepast als een bedrijfsregel wordt gewijzigd. Na aanpassing van het informatiesysteem kunnen persistente data die aanwezig zijn in het informatiesysteem leiden tot een overtreding. Het onderzoek richt zich daarnaast ook op het effect van het toevoegen van nieuwe data aan een informatiesysteem als dat systeem is gewijzigd, maar de bedrijfsregel nog niet effectief is. Door een casestudie uit te voeren naar de invoering van Sepa binnen een financiële organisatie, wordt inzicht verkregen in de impact hiervan op het bedrijfsproces, het informatiesysteem en de data

Requirement engineering best practices for Malaysian public sector

Although a variety of ICT standards have been developed as a guide for IT Managers, the Malaysian Public Sector is in tandem by developing new policies for them. The need of Requirement Engineering Best Practices for IT Manager is to produce an appropriate Software Requirement Specification. The proposed Requirement Engineering Best Practices aims to be a standard for the Malaysian Public Sector. The need of the standard is to resolve identified complexity during software project development. The complexity of present Requirement Engineering models and standard is either too specific or too general. These models do not meet the Public Sector’s requirement and the IT Manager depends on other proposed solution or does not use any Requirement Engineering models and standard. The complexity of present software process drives the Malaysian Public Sector to create several committees for monitoring the implementation of software project. It also includes several rules and policy. The rules and policy were prepared by different or multiple agencies and is complex to understand. The proposed software projects have to go through several levels of software project approval. This process is repeated and really took times to be approved. These complexities can be overcome with a proposal of Requirement Engineering Best Practices Guideline. The development of Requirement Engineering Best Practices Guideline is implemented based on the Requirement Engineering Best Practices Guideline Research Framework. This framework used with mixed method. Qualitative techniques were used for interview, refinement and validation. Meanwhile, quantitative techniques were used for the survey. Target respondents for this research are IT Managers in the Malaysian Public Sector. The guideline also consists of identified requirement processes: Software Project Approval Process, Software Requirement Specification Approval Process, Software Requirement Specification Activity Diagram and Software Requirement Specification Development Procedure. The proposed best practices is developed using the mutation and the mapping process between defined Requirement Engineering Process, Software Project Success Factor and Requirement Engineering Critical Issues which were explained in Requirement Engineering Best Practices Framework. This guideline also aligns with the ICT standard. The Requirement Engineering Best Practices had been tested with a pilot test by selected IT Managers and the actual survey had been randomly distributed to IT Manager in Malaysian Public Sector. Furthermore, the guideline had been refined by ICT experts using Delphi techniques. The proposed guideline fulfilled the criteria: completeness, sufficiency, reliability and acceptance. This compliance was validated by selected ICT experts who have different backgrounds and experiences. The proposed guideline will guide IT Managers in implementing the requirement gathering process and will also improve the Software Requirement Specification Process

Business Rules on Trial: Exploring hindrances in validation of Natural Language Business Rules

The ability for organizations to respond to change has become ever more important in today's rapidly changing macro environment. The Business Rules Approach, a relatively new Information Systems Development methodology, promises business agility through the focus on and use of Business Rules. Business Rules are to be stated in natural language, so that they can be accessed and validated by people without technical experience. The easy validation of Business Rules by non-technical business users is a fundamental, but largely untested, claim and assumption in the Business Rules Approach. This thesis employs an experiment where eight librarian business experts were exposed to natural language Business Rules in order to find out if any problems arise when the said business experts attempted validation. The data was collected by conducting interviews in conjunction with the experiment, resulting in the conclusion that there were no major hindrances to validation of natural language Business Rules. The business experts in the study were able to go beyond validation of Business Rules by correcting erroneous Business Rules, suggesting corrections to Business Rules and in rare cases suggest structural changes to Business Rules

A gestão de regras de negócio em soluções desenvolvidas sobre business process management systems

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia e Gestão de Sistemas de InformaçãoAs organizações, atualmente, operam num ambiente de grande competitividade, que faz com que estas necessitem de formas rápidas e eficazes de desenvolver e atualizar os seus Sistemas de Informação. As organizações competem cada vez mais em função da sua agilidade para responderem atempadamente às pressões e oportunidades do mercado. Os Sistemas de Informação, que suportam a operação e gestão das organizações, contribuem de forma decisiva para a sua capacidade competitiva. Nesse sentido, as organizações passaram a focar-se nos seus processos de negócio de forma a manterem elevados índices de competitividade. Mas os processos de negócio podem ser complexos, e de difícil gestão. Como tal, implementando uma gestão de regras de negócio, existe um maior controlo, maior flexibilidade e maior capacidade de alinhar os processos de negócio com a estratégia da organização. Com a separação da gestão das regras de negócio, da gestão dos processos de negócio, os gestores da organização podem gerir as variáveis de negócio independentemente da equipa de Tecnologias de Informação, atenuando assim a lacuna entre o nível de negócios e o nível dos Sistemas de Informação. No âmbito deste trabalho foi desenvolvida uma solução de integração entre a camada de processos de negócio, presente num Business Process Management System, e a camada de regras de negócio, presente num Business Rules Managament System. O desenvolvimento desta solução contribuiu para facilitar a gestão de regras de negócio por parte de quem é mais competente para o fazer - os gestores de negócio.Nowadays, organisations all around the world work in a highly competitive environment, consequently they need quick and efficient ways to develop and evolve their Information Systems. These organisations are increasingly competing based on their agility to respond in a timely manner to the pressures and opportunities of the market. Information systems, which support the operation and management of these organizations, are a decisive factor when it comes to their competitive character. In this sense, organisations began to focus on their business processes in order to maintain high levels of competitiveness. However, business processes can be complex and difficult to manage. As such, by implementing management rules, there is greater control, flexibility and ability to align business processes with organization's strategy. By separating the management of these business rules from the management of the business processes, those organisation can manage business variables autonomously from the Information Technology team, thus diminishing the gap between the fields of business and Information Systems. Under the scope of this project, a solution integrate the business process layer and the business rules layer was developed. This solution has eased the management of business rules by the ones who are most qualified to do it – business managers