Process-oriented Enterprise Mashups

Mashups, a new Web 2.0 technology provide the ability for easy creation of Web-Based applications by end-users. The uses of the mashups are often consumer related. In this paper we explore how mashups can be used in the enterprise area and hat the criteria for enterprise mashups are. We provide categories for the classification of enterprise mashups, and based upon a motivating example we go further in depth on business process enterprise mashup

Workflow processing using ERP objects

Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) Systems, and Workflow Management Systems (WFMS) evolved parallel in the past. The main business drivers for automation came from the ERP world, but the WFMS solutions discovered their own way figuring out the necessity of such applications without ERP as well. In our paper we follow only the usage of workflows in ERP systems. The central elements of built-in workflows are the ERP objects, which embed and handle the business data providing real life meaning of business objects as well. The capabilities of built-in workflow systems of such ERP solutions are presented via two market-leaders: SAP and Microsoft Dynamics AX. Both solutions are dealing with ERP objects in sence of the workflow management. We recognized and present the weaknesses and restrictions of the built-in workflow systems on these two ERP examples. In our paper we describe the results of our analysis of the interoperability of the built-in workflow systems as well and demonstrate the required add-on functionalities to provide usable cross-system workflows in such an environment. We also mention the possibility of using a built-in workflow as a full-featured WFMS

Web service composition: A survey of techniques and tools

Web services are a consolidated reality of the modern Web with tremendous, increasing impact on everyday computing tasks. They turned the Web into the largest, most accepted, and most vivid distributed computing platform ever. Yet, the use and integration of Web services into composite services or applications, which is a highly sensible and conceptually non-trivial task, is still not unleashing its full magnitude of power. A consolidated analysis framework that advances the fundamental understanding of Web service composition building blocks in terms of concepts, models, languages, productivity support techniques, and tools is required. This framework is necessary to enable effective exploration, understanding, assessing, comparing, and selecting service composition models, languages, techniques, platforms, and tools. This article establishes such a framework and reviews the state of the art in service composition from an unprecedented, holistic perspective

Developing front-end Web 2.0 technologies to access services, content and things in the future Internet

The future Internet is expected to be composed of a mesh of interoperable web services accessible from all over the web. This approach has not yet caught on since global user?service interaction is still an open issue. This paper states one vision with regard to next-generation front-end Web 2.0 technology that will enable integrated access to services, contents and things in the future Internet. In this paper, we illustrate how front-ends that wrap traditional services and resources can be tailored to the needs of end users, converting end users into prosumers (creators and consumers of service-based applications). To do this, we propose an architecture that end users without programming skills can use to create front-ends, consult catalogues of resources tailored to their needs, easily integrate and coordinate front-ends and create composite applications to orchestrate services in their back-end. The paper includes a case study illustrating that current user-centred web development tools are at a very early stage of evolution. We provide statistical data on how the proposed architecture improves these tools. This paper is based on research conducted by the Service Front End (SFE) Open Alliance initiative

Implementing Medical Business Processes Integrating Server Technologies

In this paper we describe a BPM solution implemented by integrating server technologies in a SOA manner. Our solution empowers healthcare workers to more efficiently and effectively create clinical forms and contribute in clinical business processes. The clinical forms are XML documents created either using a special editor or web forms. Shared access and document management facilities are supported via the SharePoint services while business processes management is driven by the BizTalk server. The integration between servers and components is realized via Web Services, adapters, and event handlers. The core logic behind business processes is implemented via BEPL constructs that obtain clinical forms, perform the requested data transformations, store data into the database, and push forms further into business processes. Event handlers receive forms from processes and, according to the routing information, deliver them to recipients. Web services provide SOA glue and lookups

Virtual learning process environment (VLPE): a BPM-based learning process management architecture

E-learning systems have significantly impacted the way that learning takes place within universities, particularly in providing self-learning support and flexibility of course delivery. Virtual Learning Environments help facilitate the management of educational courses for students, in particular by assisting course designers and thriving in the management of the learning itself. Current literature has shown that pedagogical modelling and learning process management facilitation are inadequate. In particular, quantitative information on the process of learning that is needed to perform real time or reflective monitoring and statistical analysis of students’ learning processes performance is deficient. Therefore, for a course designer, pedagogical evaluation and reform decisions can be difficult. This thesis presents an alternative e-learning systems architecture - Virtual Learning Process Environment (VLPE) - that uses the Business Process Management (BPM) conceptual framework to design an architecture that addresses the critical quantitative learning process information gaps associated with the conventional VLE frameworks. Within VLPE, course designers can model desired education pedagogies in the form of learning process workflows using an intuitive graphical flow diagram user-interface. Automated agents associated with BPM frameworks are employed to capture quantitative learning information from the learning process workflow. Consequently, course designers are able to monitor, analyse and re-evaluate in real time the effectiveness of their chosen pedagogy using live interactive learning process dashboards. Once a course delivery is complete the collated quantitative information can also be used to make major revisions to pedagogy design for the next iteration of the course. An additional contribution of this work is that this new architecture facilitates individual students in monitoring and analysing their own learning performances in comparison to their peers in a real time anonymous manner through a personal analytics learning process dashboard. A case scenario of the quantitative statistical analysis of a cohort of learners (10 participants in size) is presented. The analytical results of their learning processes, performances and progressions on a short Mathematics course over a five-week period are also presented in order to demonstrate that the proposed framework can significantly help to advance learning analytics and the visualisation of real time learning data