Choreography in IRS-III – coping with heterogeneous interaction patterns in web services

In this paper we describe how we handle heterogeneity in web service interaction through a choreography mechanism that we have developed for IRS-III. IRS-III is a framework and platform for developing semantic web services which utilizes the WSMO ontology. The overall design of our choreography framework is based on: the use of ontologies and state, IRS-III playing the role of a broker, differentiating between communication direction and which actor has the initiative, having representations which can be executed, a formal semantics, and the ability to suspend communication. Our framework has a full implementation which we illustrate through an example application

Encoding & Characterization of process models for Deep Predictive Process Monitoring.

La sempre crescente digitalizzazione di molti aspetti della vita, sta modificando l'esecuzione operativa di molte attività umane, producendo anche una grande quantità di informazione sotto forma di log di dati. Questi possono essere sfruttati per migliorare la qualità di queste esecuzioni. Un modo per sfruttare queste informazioni è usarle per predire come l'esecuzione di un'attività umana possa evolvere fino al suo completamento, così da supportare i manager nel determinare, per esempio, se intervenire per prevenire delle situazioni indesiderate o per meglio allocare le risorse a disposizione. Nella presente tesi, si propone un approccio che usa l'informazione relativa al parallelismo presente tra le attività per eseguire i task tipici del Predictive Process Monitoring. Questo viene fatto rappresentando le esecuzioni di processo con il corrispondente Instance Graph e processandole utilizzando delle graph convolutional neural networks. Inoltre, per definire gli ambiti in cui tale approccio funziona al meglio nel presente elaborato si illustra una nuova metrica ideata per misurare il parallelismo all'interno dei processi di business. Infine, è presentato un insieme di metriche che descrivono il contesto di esecuzione di una attività all'interno di un processo per rappresentare l'attività stessa. Questo è utilizzato sia per definire un meccanismo di "querying" per le attività all'interno dei processi sia per introdurre la nozione di "location" come un ulteriore obiettivo di predizione per le tecniche di Predictive Process Monitoring. Gli approcci proposti sono stati valutati utilizzando vari dataset reali e i risultati ottenuti sono promettenti.Ever-increasing digitalization of all aspects of life modifies the operative executions of most human tasks and produces a huge wealth of information, in the form of data logs, that could be leveraged to further improve the general quality of such executions. One way of leveraging such information is to predict how the execution of such tasks will unfold until their completion so as to be capable of supporting the managers in determining, for example, whether to intervene to prevent undesired process outcomes or how to best allocate resources. In the present thesis, it is proposed an approach that uses the information about the parallelism among activities for the Predictive Process Monitoring tasks, by representing process executions with their corresponding Instance Graph and processing them using deep graph convolutional neural networks. Also, to define the scope to best apply such an approach is devised a novel metric that manages to effectively measure the parallelism in a business process model. Lastly, the definition of a set of metrics that describe the execution context of an activity inside a process to represent the activity itself is presented. This is used both to define a querying mechanism for activities in processes and to introduce the notion of "location" as a further relevant prediction target for Predictive Process Monitoring techniques. The proposed techniques have been experimentally evaluated using several real-world datasets and the results are promising

Verification and Analysis of Web Service Composition

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Dynamic Web Services Composition

Emerging web services technology has introduced the concept of autonomic interoperability and portability between services. The number of online services has increased dramatically with many duplicating similar functionality and results. Composing online services to solve user needs is a growing area of research. This entails designing systems which can discover participating services and integrate these according to the end user requirements. This thesis proposes a Dynamic Web Services Composition (DWSC) process that is based upon consideration of previously successful attempts in this area, in particular utilizing AI-planning based solutions. It proposes a unique approach for service selection and dynamic web service composition by exploring the possibility of semantic web usability and its limitations. It also proposes a design architecture called Optimal Synthesis Plan Generation framework (OSPG), which supports the composition process through the evaluation of all available solutions (including all participating single and composite services). OSPG is designed to take into account user preferences, which supports optimality and robustness of the output plan. The implementation of OSPG will be con�gured and tested via division of search criteria in di�erent modes thereby locating the best plan for the user. The services composition and discovery-based model is evaluated via considering a range of criteria, such as scope, correctness, scalability and versatility metrics

Automatic Service Composition. Models, Techniques and Tools.

Maurizio Lenzerini, Giuseppe De Giacomo, Massimo Mecell

Dynamic Workflow-Engine

We present and assess the novel thesis that a language commonly accepted for requirement elicitation is worth using for configuration of business process automation systems. We suggest that Cockburn's well accepted requirements elicitation language - the written use case language, with a few extensions, ought to be used as a workflow modelling language. We evaluate our thesis by studying in detail an industrial implementation of a workflow engine whose workflow modelling language is our extended written use case language; by surveying the variety of business processes that can be expressed by our extended written use case language; and by empirically assessing the readability of our extended written use case language. Our contribution is sixfold: (i) an architecture with which a workflow engine whose workflow modelling language is an extended written use case language can be built, configured, used and monitored; (ii) a detailed study of an industrial implementation of use case oriented workflow engine; (iii) assessment of the expressive power of the extended written use case language which is based on a known pattern catalogue; (iv) another assessments of the expressive power of the extended written use case language which is based on an equivalence to a formal model that is known to be expressive; (v) an empirical evaluation in industrial context of the readability of our extended written use case language in comparison to the readability of the incumbent graphical languages; and (vi) reflections upon the state of the art, methodologies, our results, and opportunities for further research. Our conclusions are that a workflow engine whose workflow modelling language is an extended written use case language can be built, configured, used and monitored; that in an environment that calls upon an extended written use case language as a workflow modelling language, the transition between the modelling and verification state, enactment state, and monitoring state is dynamic; that a use case oriented workflow engine was implemented in industrial settings and that the approach was well accepted by management, workflow configuration officers and workflow participants alike; that the extended written use case language is quite expressive, as much as the incumbent graphical languages; and that in industrial context an extended written use case language is an efficient communication device amongst stakeholders

Problem solving methods in a global networked age

We believe that the future for problem solving method (PSM) derived work is very promising. In short, PSMs provide a solid foundation for creating a semantic layer supporting planetary-scale networks. Moreover, within a world-scale network where billions services are used and created by billions of parties in ad hoc dynamic fashion we believe that PSM-based mechanisms provide the only viable approach to dealing the sheer scale systematically. Our current experiments in this area are based upon a generic ontology for describing Web services derived from earlier work on PSMs. We outline how platforms based on our ontology can support large-scale networked interactivity in three main areas. Within a large European project we are able to map business level process descriptions to semantic Web service descriptions, to enable business experts to manage and use enterprise processes running in corporate information technology systems. Although highly successful, Web service-based applications predominately run behind corporate firewalls and are far less pervasive on the general Web. Within a second large European project we are extending our semantic service work using the principles underlying the Web and Web 2.0 to transform the Web from a Web of data to one where services are managed and used at large scale. Significant initiatives are now underway in North America, Asia, and Europe to design a new Internet using a 'clean-slate' approach to fulfill the demands created by new modes of use and the additional 3 billion users linked to mobile phones. Our investigations within the European-based Future Internet program indicate that a significant opportunity exists for our PSM-derived work to address the key challenges currently identified: scalability, trust, interoperability, pervasive usability, and mobility. We outline one PSM-derived approach as an exemplar