Requirements traceability in model-driven development: Applying model and transformation conformance

The variety of design artifacts (models) produced in a model-driven design process results in an intricate relationship between requirements and the various models. This paper proposes a methodological framework that simplifies management of this relationship, which helps in assessing the quality of models, realizations and transformation specifications. Our framework is a basis for understanding requirements traceability in model-driven development, as well as for the design of tools that support requirements traceability in model-driven development processes. We propose a notion of conformance between application models which reduces the effort needed for assessment activities. We discuss how this notion of conformance can be integrated with model transformations

Opaque Service Virtualisation: A Practical Tool for Emulating Endpoint Systems

Large enterprise software systems make many complex interactions with other services in their environment. Developing and testing for production-like conditions is therefore a very challenging task. Current approaches include emulation of dependent services using either explicit modelling or record-and-replay approaches. Models require deep knowledge of the target services while record-and-replay is limited in accuracy. Both face developmental and scaling issues. We present a new technique that improves the accuracy of record-and-replay approaches, without requiring prior knowledge of the service protocols. The approach uses Multiple Sequence Alignment to derive message prototypes from recorded system interactions and a scheme to match incoming request messages against prototypes to generate response messages. We use a modified Needleman-Wunsch algorithm for distance calculation during message matching. Our approach has shown greater than 99% accuracy for four evaluated enterprise system messaging protocols. The approach has been successfully integrated into the CA Service Virtualization commercial product to complement its existing techniques.Comment: In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion (pp. 202-211). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1510.0142

Verslo procesų prognozavimo ir imitavimo taikant sisteminių įvykių žurnalų analizės metodus tyrimas

Business process (BP) analysis is one of the core activities in organisations that lead to improvements and achievement of a competitive edge. BP modelling and simulation are one of the most widely applied methods for analysing and improving BPs. The analysis requires to model BP and to apply analysis techniques to the models to answer queries leading to improvements. The input of the analysis process is BP models. The models can be in the form of BP models using industry-accepted BP modelling languages, mathematical models, simulation models and others. The model creation is the most important part of the BP analysis, and it is both time-consuming and costly activity. Nowadays most of the data generated in the organisations are electronic. Therefore, the re-use of such data can improve the results of the analysis. Thus, the main goal of the thesis is to improve BP analysis and simulation by proposing a method to discover a BP model from an event log and automate simulation model generation. The dissertation consists of an introduction, three main chapters and general conclusions. The first chapter discusses BP analysis methods. In addition, the process mining research area is presented, the techniques for automated model discovery, model validation and execution prediction are analysed. The second part of the chapter investigates the area of BP simula-tion. The second chapter of the dissertation presents a novel method which automatically discovers Bayesian Belief Network from an event log and, furthermore, automatically generates BP simulation model. The discovery of the Bayesian Belief Network consists of three steps: the discovery of a directed acyclic graph, generation of conditional probability tables and their combination. The BP simulation model is generated from the discovered directed acyclic graph and uses the belief network inferences during the simulation to infer the execution of the BP and to generate activity data dur-ing the simulation. The third chapter presents the experimental research of the proposed network and discusses the validity of the research and experiments. The experiments use selected logs that exhibit a wide array of behaviour. The experiments are performed in order to test the discovery of the graphs, the inference of the current process instance execution probability, the predic-tion of the future execution of the process instances and the correctness of the simulation. The results of the dissertation were published in 9 scientific publica-tions, 2 of which were in reviewed scientific journals indexed in Clarivate Analytics Science Citation Index

Process mining for healthcare: Characteristics and challenges

Process mining techniques can be used to analyse business processes using the data logged during their execution. These techniques are leveraged in a wide range of domains, including healthcare, where it focuses mainly on the analysis of diagnostic, treatment, and organisational processes. Despite the huge amount of data generated in hospitals by staff and machinery involved in healthcare processes, there is no evidence of a systematic uptake of process mining beyond targeted case studies in a research context. When developing and using process mining in healthcare, distinguishing characteristics of healthcare processes such as their variability and patient-centred focus require targeted attention. Against this background, the Process-Oriented Data Science in Healthcare Alliance has been established to propagate the research and application of techniques targeting the data-driven improvement of healthcare processes. This paper, an initiative of the alliance, presents the distinguishing characteristics of the healthcare domain that need to be considered to successfully use process mining, as well as open challenges that need to be addressed by the community in the future.This work is partially supported by ANID FONDECYT 1220202, Dirección de Investigación de la Vicerrectoría de Investigación de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile - PUENTE [Grant No. 026/ 2021]; and Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo [Grant Nos. ANID-PFCHA/Doctorado Nacional/2019–21190116, ANID-PFCHA/ Doctorado Nacional/2020–21201411]. With regard to the co-author Hilda Klasky, this manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-accessplan).Peer ReviewedArticle signat per 55 autors/es: Jorge Munoz-Gama (a)* , Niels Martin (b,c)* , Carlos Fernandez-Llatas (d,g)* , Owen A. Johnson (e)* , Marcos Sepúlveda (a)* , Emmanuel Helm (f)* , Victor Galvez-Yanjari (a)* , Eric Rojas (a) , Antonio Martinez-Millana (d) , Davide Aloini (k) , Ilaria Angela Amantea (l,q,r) , Robert Andrews (ab), Michael Arias (z) , Iris Beerepoot (o) , Elisabetta Benevento (k) , Andrea Burattin (ai), Daniel Capurro (j) , Josep Carmona (s) , Marco Comuzzi (w), Benjamin Dalmas (aj,ak), Rene de la Fuente (a) , Chiara Di Francescomarino (h) , Claudio Di Ciccio (i) , Roberto Gatta (ad,ae), Chiara Ghidini (h) , Fernanda Gonzalez-Lopez (a) , Gema Ibanez-Sanchez (d) , Hilda B. Klasky (p) , Angelina Prima Kurniati (al), Xixi Lu (o) , Felix Mannhardt (m), Ronny Mans (af), Mar Marcos (v) , Renata Medeiros de Carvalho (m), Marco Pegoraro (x) , Simon K. Poon (ag), Luise Pufahl (u) , Hajo A. Reijers (m,o) , Simon Remy (y) , Stefanie Rinderle-Ma (ah), Lucia Sacchi (t) , Fernando Seoane (g,am,an), Minseok Song (aa), Alessandro Stefanini (k) , Emilio Sulis (l) , Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede (ab), Pieter J. Toussaint (ac), Vicente Traver (d) , Zoe Valero-Ramon (d) , Inge van de Weerd (o) , Wil M.P. van der Aalst (x) , Rob Vanwersch (m), Mathias Weske (y) , Moe Thandar Wynn (ab), Francesca Zerbato (n) // (a) Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile; (b) Hasselt University, Belgium; (c) Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), Belgium; (d) Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain; (e) University of Leeds, United Kingdom; (f) University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria; (g) Karolinska Institutet, Sweden; (h) Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy; (i) Sapienza University of Rome, Italy; (j) University of Melbourne, Australia; (k) University of Pisa, Italy; (l) University of Turin, Italy; (m) Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands; (n) University of St. Gallen, Switzerland; (o) Utrecht University, The Netherlands; (p) Oak Ridge National Laboratory, United States; (q) University of Bologna, Italy; (r) University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg; (s) Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain; (t) University of Pavia, Italy; (u) Technische Universitaet Berlin, Germany; (v) Universitat Jaume I, Spain; (w) Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Republic of Korea; (x) RWTH Aachen University, Germany; (y) University of Potsdam, Germany; (z) Universidad de Costa Rica, Costa Rica; (aa) Pohang University of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea; (ab) Queensland University of Technology, Australia; (ac) Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway; (ad) Universita degli Studi di Brescia, Italy; (ae) Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), Switzerland; (af) Philips Research, the Netherlands; (ag) The University of Sydney, Australia; (ah) Technical University of Munich, Germany; (ai) Technical University of Denmark, Denmark; (aj) Mines Saint-Etienne, France; (ak) Université Clermont Auvergne, France; (al) Telkom University, Indonesia; (am) Karolinska University Hospital, Sweden; (an) University of Borås, SwedenPostprint (published version

Process mining for healthcare: Characteristics and challenges

[EN] Process mining techniques can be used to analyse business processes using the data logged during their execution. These techniques are leveraged in a wide range of domains, including healthcare, where it focuses mainly on the analysis of diagnostic, treatment, and organisational processes. Despite the huge amount of data generated in hospitals by staff and machinery involved in healthcare processes, there is no evidence of a systematic uptake of process mining beyond targeted case studies in a research context. When developing and using process mining in healthcare, distinguishing characteristics of healthcare processes such as their variability and patient-centred focus require targeted attention. Against this background, the Process-Oriented Data Science in Healthcare Alliance has been established to propagate the research and application of techniques targeting the data-driven improvement of healthcare processes. This paper, an initiative of the alliance, presents the distinguishing characteristics of the healthcare domain that need to be considered to successfully use process mining, as well as open challenges that need to be addressed by the community in the future.This work is partially supported by ANID FONDECYT 1220202, Direccion de Investigacion de la Vicerrectoria de Investigacion de la Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile-PUENTE [Grant No. 026/2021] ; and Agencia Nacional de Investigacion y Desarrollo [Grant Nos. ANID-PFCHA/Doctorado Nacional/2019-21190116, ANID-PFCHA/Doctorado Nacional/2020-21201411] . With regard to the co-author Hilda Klasky, this manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE) . The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan)Munoz Gama, J.; Martin, N.; Fernández Llatas, C.; Johnson, OA.; Sepúlveda, M.; Helm, E.; Galvez-Yanjari, V.... (2022). Process mining for healthcare: Characteristics and challenges. Journal of Biomedical Informatics. 127:1-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2022.10399411512

Collaboration vs. choreography conformance in BPMN

The BPMN 2.0 standard is a widely used semi-formal notation to model distributed information systems from different perspectives. The standard makes available a set of diagrams to represent such perspectives. Choreography diagrams represent global constraints concerning the interactions among system components without exposing their internal structure. Collaboration diagrams instead permit to depict the internal behaviour of a component, also referred as process, when integrated with others so to represent a possible implementation of the distributed system. This paper proposes a design methodology and a formal framework for checking conformance of choreographies against collaborations. In particular, the paper presents a direct formal operational semantics for both BPMN choreography and collaboration diagrams. Conformance aspects are proposed through two relations defined on top of the defined semantics. The approach benefits from the availability of a tool we have developed, named C4, that permits to experiment the theoretical framework in practical contexts. The objective here is to make the exploited formal methods transparent to system designers, thus fostering a wider adoption by practitioners

Service-oriented middleware for managing inter-enterprise collaborations

Peer reviewe