On the Reuse of SOA Components on Business Process Analysis Stages

In 2005 four German universities created a research program to improve and standardize its administration processes. Therefore, reams of processes have been analyzed and core functions identified. Automatable core functions have been afterwards implemented as webservices using the Service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm. For reasons of reuse these web-services have been documented using a service catalogue. However, a real advantage of SOA does not evolve until complex business services become configurable on business level. Thereby, the problem arises to make the meaning of the services understandable to non-IT employees, like business analysts. In this paper, we introduce a framework for building up a service catalogue addressing business analysts instead of IT engineers. Therefore, we discuss the composition of webservices to more complex business components. These components are described on an ITlevel addressing the catalogue manager, but contain also non-formal information for business analysts. Thus, the redesign of the universities processes can be supported now, using web-services encapsulated by business components. Our findings can help to increase the usage and acceptance of web-services on a business process level

Aligning a Service Provisioning Model of a Service-Oriented System with the ITIL v.3 Life Cycle

Bringing together the ICT and the business layer of a service-oriented system (SoS) remains a great challenge. Few papers tackle the management of SoS from the business and organizational point of view. One solution is to use the well-known ITIL v.3 framework. The latter enables to transform the organization into a service-oriented organizational which focuses on the value provided to the service customers. In this paper, we align the steps of the service provisioning model with the ITIL v.3 processes. The alignment proposed should help organizations and IT teams to integrate their ICT layer, represented by the SoS, and their business layer, represented by ITIL v.3. One main advantage of this combined use of ITIL and a SoS is the full service orientation of the company.Comment: This document is the technical work of a conference paper submitted to the International Conference on Exploring Service Science 1.5 (IESS 2015

Quality-aware model-driven service engineering

Service engineering and service-oriented architecture as an integration and platform technology is a recent approach to software systems integration. Quality aspects ranging from interoperability to maintainability to performance are of central importance for the integration of heterogeneous, distributed service-based systems. Architecture models can substantially influence quality attributes of the implemented software systems. Besides the benefits of explicit architectures on maintainability and reuse, architectural constraints such as styles, reference architectures and architectural patterns can influence observable software properties such as performance. Empirical performance evaluation is a process of measuring and evaluating the performance of implemented software. We present an approach for addressing the quality of services and service-based systems at the model-level in the context of model-driven service engineering. The focus on architecture-level models is a consequence of the black-box character of services

Size Matters: Microservices Research and Applications

In this chapter we offer an overview of microservices providing the introductory information that a reader should know before continuing reading this book. We introduce the idea of microservices and we discuss some of the current research challenges and real-life software applications where the microservice paradigm play a key role. We have identified a set of areas where both researcher and developer can propose new ideas and technical solutions.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1706.0735

Integration of BPM systems

New technologies have emerged to support the global economy where for instance suppliers, manufactures and retailers are working together in order to minimise the cost and maximise efficiency. One of the technologies that has become a buzz word for many businesses is business process management or BPM. A business process comprises activities and tasks, the resources required to perform each task, and the business rules linking these activities and tasks. The tasks may be performed by human and/or machine actors. Workflow provides a way of describing the order of execution and the dependent relationships between the constituting activities of short or long running processes. Workflow allows businesses to capture not only the information but also the processes that transform the information - the process asset (Koulopoulos, T. M., 1995). Applications which involve automated, human-centric and collaborative processes across organisations are inherently different from one organisation to another. Even within the same organisation but over time, applications are adapted as ongoing change to the business processes is seen as the norm in today’s dynamic business environment. The major difference lies in the specifics of business processes which are changing rapidly in order to match the way in which businesses operate. In this chapter we introduce and discuss Business Process Management (BPM) with a focus on the integration of heterogeneous BPM systems across multiple organisations. We identify the problems and the main challenges not only with regards to technologies but also in the social and cultural context. We also discuss the issues that have arisen in our bid to find the solutions

Semantic model-driven development of service-centric software architectures

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a recent architectural paradigm that has received much attention. The prevalent focus on platforms such as Web services, however, needs to be complemented by appropriate software engineering methods. We propose the model-driven development of service-centric software systems. We present in particular an investigation into the role of enriched semantic modelling for a modeldriven development framework for service-centric software systems. Ontologies as the foundations of semantic modelling and its enhancement through architectural pattern modelling are at the core of the proposed approach. We introduce foundations and discuss the benefits and also the challenges in this context

Contract Aware Components, 10 years after

The notion of contract aware components has been published roughly ten years ago and is now becoming mainstream in several fields where the usage of software components is seen as critical. The goal of this paper is to survey domains such as Embedded Systems or Service Oriented Architecture where the notion of contract aware components has been influential. For each of these domains we briefly describe what has been done with this idea and we discuss the remaining challenges.Comment: In Proceedings WCSI 2010, arXiv:1010.233