Developing Web Services Using Workflow Model: An Inter-organizational Perspective

This paper discusses how a workflow model can be used in the design and development of web services composition. We particularly investigate the development of web services composition in an inter-organizational workflow environment. We discuss respectively how to design an inter-organizational workflow from scratch when there is no existing internal workflow, and how to make existing internal workflows work together in an inter-organizational workflow environment

The Challenges of Inter-Organizational Business Process Design - A Research Agenda

Given the increasing importance of value chain collaboration, business processes need to be more closely aligned across organizational boundaries. Hence, business process modeling and design have to be enhanced and extended to cope with inter-organizational business relationships. Among the challenges that arise are interdependencies between internal and external processes, different process logic and terminology, missing clarification of responsibilities and confidentiality issues. This paper analyzes existing approaches to business process modeling, workflow management and B2B standardization with regard to the specific requirements concerning inter-organizational business process design. It extracts the relevant concepts addressing these requirements and draws up an agenda for further research

An Evaluation of Inter-Organizational Workflow Modelling Formalisms

This paper evaluates the dynamic aspects of the UML in the context of inter-organizational workflows. Two evaluation methodologies are used. The first one is ontological and is based on the BWW (Bunge-Wand-Weber) models. The second validation is based on prototyping and consists in the development of a workflow management system in the aerospace industry. Both convergent and divergent results are found from the two validations. Possible enhancements to the UML formalism are suggested from the convergent results. On the other hand, the divergent results suggest the need for a contextual specification in the BWW models. Ce travail consiste en une évaluation des aspects dynamiques du language UML dans un contexte de workflow inter-organisationnel. Le choix du language par rapport à d'autres est motivé par sa richesse grammaticale lui offrant une très bonne adaptation à ce contexte. L'évaluation se fait par une validation ontologique basée sur les modèles BWW (Bunge-Wand-Weber) et par la réalisation d'un prototype de système de gestion de workflows inter-organisationnels. À partir des résultats convergents obtenus des deux différentes analyses, des améliorations au formalisme UML sont suggérées. D'un autre coté, les analyses divergentes suggèrent une possibilité de spécifier les modèles BWW à des contextes plus particuliers tels que ceux des workflows et permettent également de suggérer d'autres améliorations possibles au langage.Ontology, Conceptual study, Prototype Validation, UML, IS development methods and tools., Ontologie, étude conceptuelle, validation du prototype, UML, méthodes et outils de développement IS

Inheritance of interorganizational workflows : how to agree to disagree without loosing control?

Intemet-based technology, E-commerce, and the rise of networked virtual enterprises have fueled the need for interorganizational workflows. Although XML allows trading partners to exchange information, it cannot be used to coordinate activities in different organizational entities. Business-to-business processes are hindered by the lack of a common language to support collaboration. This paper describes the P2P (Public-To-Private) approach which addresses some of the problems using a notion of inheritance. The approach consists of three steps: (1) create a common understanding of the interorganizational workfiow by specifying the shared public workflow, (2) partition the public workflow over the organizational entities involved, and (3) for each organizational entity: create a private workflow which is a subclass of the relevant part of the public workfiow. This paper shows that this approach avoids typical anomalies in business-to-business collaboration (e.g., deadlocks and livelocks) and yields an interorganizational workfiow which is guaranteed to realize the behavior specified in the public workflow

Modeling and verification of web service composition based interorganizational workflows

Interorganisationale Workflows sind Arbeitsabläufe, welche die Grenzen einer Organisation verlassen und einen Rahmen für Kooperationen der verschiedenen autonomen Organisationen zur Verfügung stellen. Ein wichtiger Punkt für den Entwurf solcher Workflows ist die Balance zwischen Offenheit und Abgrenzung, wobei erstere für Kooperationen und letztere die für den Schutz von Know-how benötigt wird. Workflow Sichten stellen ein effizientes Werkzeug für diesen Zweck zur Verfügung. Durch Offenlegung von bestimmten Teilen eines Prozesses, können Organisationen sowohl kooperieren als auch das Know-how schützen. Diese Dissertation präsentiert nun eine Methode für die korrekte Konstruktion von Workflow Sichten. Es wird angenommen, dass Organisationen Web Service orientierte Technologien zur Modellierung und Implementierung von interorganisationalen Workflows verwenden. Die Anwendung von Web Services bietet Organisationen viele Vorteile. Den eigentlichen Mehrwert von Web Services stellt aber die Kompositionsfähigkeit dar. Verfügbare Web Services können dadurch von anderen Choreographien und Orchestrationen (wieder-)verwendet werden. Die Notwendigkeit der Implementierung von Systemen von Null weg kann minimiert werden. Die zentralen Anforderungen sind einerseits eine Architektur mit adäquatem Potential, andererseits die Verifikation der Korrektheit. Diese Dissertation präsentiert nun eine Architektur zur Modellierung von Web Service Composition basierten interorganisationalen Workflows, genannt föderierte Choreographien, die verglichen mit anderen Architekturen verschiedene Vorteile anbieten. Darüber hinaus werden Algorithmen und Techniken zur Verifikation der strukturellen und temporalen Korrektheit vorgestellt. Strukturelle Korrektheit prüft, ob die Strukturen der beteiligten Prozesse zusammenpassen. Temporale Korrektheit überprüft, ob ein interorganisationaler Workflow, der aus mehreren Choreographien und Orchestrationen besteht hinsichtlich der lokalen und globalen Bedingungen fehlerfrei ist. Mit Hilfe dieser Techniken kann die strukturelle und temporale Konformität des Modells zur Designzeit überprüft werden. Falls das Modell nicht strukturell oder temporal konform ist, können nötige Änderungen durchgeführt werden, sodass die korrekte Ausführung zur Laufzeit garantiert werden kann. Die Überprüfung der Konformität zur Designzeit reduziert die Prozesskosten vor allem wegen den folgenden zwei Gründen: Erstens, die entdeckten Fehler zur Designzeit sind normalerweise billiger als jene, die zur Laufzeit entdeckt werden und zweitens, Fehlerbehandlungsmechanismen können verhindert werden, die wiederum Zusatzkosten verursachen. Zusätzlich zu der vorgestellten Architektur wird eine allgemeinere Architektur zusammen mit den passenden Konformitätsprüfungsalgorithmen präsentiert. Der Ansatz ist Platform- und sprachunabhängig und die Algorithmen sind verteilt.Interorganizational workflows are workflows that cross the boundaries of a single organization and provide a framework for cooperation of different autonomous organizations. An important issue when designing such workflows is the balance between the openness needed for cooperation and the privacy needed for protection of business know-how. Workflow views provide an efficient tool for this aim. By exposure of only selected parts of a process, organizations can both cooperate and protect their business logic. This dissertation presents a technique for a correct construction of workflow views. It is assumed that organizations and partners use web services and web service related technology to model and implement interorganizational workflows. Application of web services offers several advantages for organizations. The real surplus of web services is their capability of being composed to more complex systems. Available web services can be reused by other choreographies and orchestrations and the need for development of new systems from scratch can be minimized. The essential requirements are on the one hand an architecture with adequate capabilities and on the other hand, verification of correctness. This dissertation proposes an architecture for modeling web service composition based interorganizational workflows, called \emph{federated choreographies}, that provides several advantages compared to existing proposals. Moreover, algorithms and techniques for verification of structural and temporal correctness of interorganizational workflows are proposed. Structural conformance checks if the structures of the involved processes match. Temporal conformance checks if an interorganizational workflow composed of choreographies and orchestrations is temporally error-free with respect to local and global temporal constraints. The proposed algorithms can be applied for checking the structural and temporal conformance of the federated choreographies at design-time. If the model is not structurally or temporally conformant, necessary modifications can be done such that the correct execution of the flow at run-time can be guaranteed. The conformance checking at design time reduces the cost of process because of two reasons: first, errors detected at design time are normally cheaper than those detected at run time and second, exception handling mechanisms can be avoided which are, in turn, coupled with additional costs. In addition to the proposed architecture, a more general architecture together with the conformance checking algorithms and techniques for interorganizational workflows are presented. The presented approach is language and platform independent and algorithms work in a distributed manner

UniFlexView : a unified framework for consistent construction of BPMN and BPEL process views

Process view technologies allow organizations to create different granularity levels of abstraction of their business processes, therefore enabling a more effective business process management, analysis, interoperation, and privacy controls. Existing research proposed view construction and abstraction techniques for block-based (ie, BPEL) and graph-based (ie, BPMN) process models. However, the existing techniques treat each type of the two types of models separately. Especially, this brings in challenges for achieving a consistent process view for a BPEL model that derives from a BPMN model. In this paper, we propose a unified framework, namely UniFlexView, for supporting automatic and consistent process view construction. With our framework, process modelers can use our proposed View Definition Language to specify their view construction requirements disregarding the types of process models. Our UniFlexView's system prototype has been developed as a proof of concept and demonstration of the usability and feasibility of our framework. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Semantic Information Assurance for Secure Distributed Knowledge Management: A Business Process Perspective

Secure knowledge management for eBusiness processes that span multiple organizations requires intraorganizational and interorganizational perspectives on security and access control issues. There is paucity in research on information assurance of distributed interorganizational eBusiness processes from a business process perspective. This paper presents a framework for secure semantic eBusiness processes integrating three streams of research, namely: 1) eBusiness processes; 2) information assurance; and 3) semantic technology. This paper presents the conceptualization and analysis of a secure semantic eBusiness process framework and architecture, and provides a holistic view of a secure interorganizational semantic eBusiness process. This paper fills a gap in the existing literature by extending role-based access control models for eBusiness processes that are done by using ontological analysis and semantic Web technologies to develop a framework for computationally feasible secure eBusiness process knowledge representations. An integrated secure eBusiness process approach is needed to provide a unifying conceptual framework to understand the issues surrounding access control over distributed information and knowledge resources