An Embedded Domain Specific Language to Model, Transform and Quality Assure Business Processes in Business-Driven Development

In Business-Driven Development (BDD), business process models are produced by business analysts. To ensure that the business requirements are satisfied, the IT solution is directly derived through a process of model refinement. If models do not contain all the required technical details or contain errors, the derived implementation would be incorrect and the BDD lifecycle would have to be repeated. In this project we present a functional domain specific language embedded in Haskell, with which: 1) models can rapidly be produced in a concise and abstract manner, 2) enables focus on the specifications rather than the implementation, 3) ensures that all the required details, to generate the executable code, are specified, 4) models can be transformed, analysed and interpreted in various ways, 5) quality assures models by carrying out three types of checks; by Haskell.s type checker, at construction-time and by functions that analyse the soundness of models, 6) enables users to define quality assured composite model transformations

Data-Flow Based Model Analysis

The concept of (meta) modeling combines an intuitive way of formalizing the structure of an application domain with a high expressiveness that makes it suitable for a wide variety of use cases and has therefore become an integral part of many areas in computer science. While the definition of modeling languages through the use of meta models, e.g. in Unified Modeling Language (UML), is a well-understood process, their validation and the extraction of behavioral information is still a challenge. In this paper we present a novel approach for dynamic model analysis along with several fields of application. Examining the propagation of information along the edges and nodes of the model graph allows to extend and simplify the definition of semantic constraints in comparison to the capabilities offered by e.g. the Object Constraint Language. Performing a flow-based analysis also enables the simulation of dynamic behavior, thus providing an "abstract interpretation"-like analysis method for the modeling domain

An embedded domain specific language to model, transform and quality assure business processes in business-driven development

In Business-Driven Development (BDD), business process models are produced by business analysts. To ensure that the business requirements are satisfied, the IT solution is directly derived through a process of model refinement. If models do not contain all the required technical details or contain errors, the derived implementation would be incorrect and the BDD lifecycle would have to be repeated. In this project we present a functional domain specific language embedded in Haskell, with which: 1) models can rapidly be produced in a concise and abstract manner, 2) enables focus on the specifications rather than the implementation, 3) ensures that all the required details, to generate the executable code, are specified, 4) models can be transformed, analysed and interpreted in various ways, 5) quality assures models by carrying out three types of checks; by Haskell‟s type checker, at construction-time and by functions that analyse the soundness of models, 6) enables users to define quality assured composite model transformations.peer-reviewe

Business Process Modelling with Continuous Validation

In this paper, we demonstrate the prototype of a modelling tool that applies graph-based rules for identifying problems in business process models. The advantages of our approach are twofold. Firstly, it is not necessary to compute the complete state space of the model in order to find errors. Secondly, our technique can even be applied to incomplete business process models. Thus, the modeller can be supported by direct feedback during the model construction. This feedback does not only report problems, but it also identifies their reasons and makes suggestions for improvements

Verification of Structured Processes: A Method Based on an Unsoundness Profile

The verification of business processes has been widely studied in the last two decades achieving significant results. Despite this, existing verification techniques based on state space exploration suffer, for large processes, the state space explosion problem. New techniques improved verification performance by structuring processes as trees. However, they do not support complex constructs for advanced synchronization and exception management. To cope with this issue we propose the definition of an unsoundness profile of a given process language, which specifies all possible combinations of control flow constructs that can lead to errors in the behavior of structured processes defined with such a language. In addition, we introduce the sequential and hierarchical soundness properties, which make use of this profile to determine soundness of a structured process with complex constructs in polynomial time. As an example, we defined an unsoundness profile for a subset of the BPMN language and verified the behavior of a BPMN process model.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

Using Concurrent Task Trees for Stakeholder-centered Modeling and Visualization of Business Processes

The different stakeholders in Business Process Management have to deal with various process models in order to understand the business processes being relevant for them. Especially inexperienced stakeholders often have difficulties in comprehending large and complex process models. In this paper a stakeholder-centered approach for modeling, changing and visualizing business processes is introduced. It is based on the Concurrent Task Tree (CTT), which constitutes a task modeling language widely applied in the field of end-user development. In particular, CTT considers stakeholder needs in modeling the behaviour of user interfaces. In the context of our work we apply CTT for modeling, changing and visualizing business processes. To evaluate whether CTT is appropriate for stakeholder-centered process modeling we compare it with imperative process modeling, and introduce a mapping between CTT process models and imperative process models expressed in terms of the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). Finally, we provide an advanced stakeholder-centered visualization concept based on CTT

Automated conflict resolution for patients with multiple morbidity being treated using more than one set of single condition clinical guidance: A case study

Background The number of people in the UK with two or more conditions continues to grow and their clinical management is complicated by the reliance on guidance focused on a single condition. This leaves individual clinicians responsible for collating disparate information from patient management systems and care recommendations to manually manage the contradictions that exist in the simultaneous treatment of various conditions. Methods/design We have devised a modelling language based on BPMN that allows us to create computer interpretable representations of single condition guidance and incorporate patient data to detect the points of conflict between multiple conditions based on their transformation to logical constraints. This has been used to develop a prototype clinical decision support tool that we can use to highlight the causes of conflict between them in three main areas: medication, lifestyle and well-being, and appointment bookings. Results The prototype tool was used to discern contradictions in the care recommendations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and osteoarthritis. These were presented to a panel of clinicians who confirmed that the tool produced clinically relevant alerts that can advise clinicians of the presence of conflicts between guidelines relating to both clashes in medication or lifestyle advice. Conclusions The need for supporting general practitioners in their treatment of patients remains and this proof of concept has demonstrated that by converting this guidance into computer-interpretable pathways we can use constraint solvers to readily identify clinically relevant points of conflict between critical elements of the pathway