6 research outputs found

    Artifact-centric business process models in UML : specification and reasoning

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    Business processes are directly involved in the achievement of an organization's goals, and for this reason they should be performed in the best possible way. Modeling business processes can help to achieve this as, for instance, models can facilitate the communication between the people involved in the process, they provide a basis for process improvement and they can help perform process management. Processes can be modeled from many different perspectives. Traditional process modeling has followed the process-centric (or activity-centric) perspective, where the focus is on the sequencing of activities (i.e. the control flow), largely ignoring or underspecifying the data required by these tasks. In contrast, the artifact-centric (or data-centric) approach to process modeling focuses on defining the data required by the tasks and the details of the tasks themselves in terms of the changes they make to the data. The BALSA framework defines four dimensions which should be represented in any artifact-centric business process model: business artifacts, lifecycle, services (i.e. tasks) and associations. Using different types of models to represent these dimensions will result in distinct representations, whose differing characteristics (e.g. the degree of formality or understandability) will make them more appropriate for one purpose or another. Considering this, in the first part of this thesis we propose a framework, BAUML, for modeling business processes following an artifact-centric perspective. This framework is based on using a combination of UML and OCL models, and its goal is to have a final representation of the process which is both understandable and formal, to avoid ambiguities and errors. However, once a process model has been defined, it is important to ensure its quality. This will avoid the propagation of errors to the process's implementation. Although there are many different quality criteria, we focus on the semantic correctness of the model, answering questions such as "does it represent reality correctly?" or "are there any errors and contradictions in it?". Therefore, the second part of this thesis is concerned with finding a way to determine the semantic correctness of our BAUML models. We are interested in considering the BAUML model as a whole, including the meaning of the tasks. To do so, we first translate our models into a well-known framework, a DCDS (Data-centric Dynamic System) to which then modelchecking techniques can be applied. However, DCDSs have been defined theoretically and there is no tool that implements them. For this reason, we also created a prototype tool, AuRUS-BAUML, which is able to translate our BAUML models into logic and to reason on their semantic correctness using an existing tool, SVTe. The integration between AuRUS-BAUML and SVTe is transparent to the user. Logically, the thesis also presents the logic translation which is performed by the tool.Els processos de negoci estan directament relacionats amb els objectius de negoci, i per tant és important que aquests processos es duguin a terme de la millor manera possible. Optar per modelar-los pot ajudar a aconseguir-ho, ja que els models proporcionen nombrosos avantatges. Per exemple: faciliten la comunicació entre les parts involucrades en el procés, proporcionen una base a partir del qual millorar-lo, i poden ajudar a gestionar-lo. Els processos es poden modelar des de diferents perspectives. El modelat tradicional de processos s'ha basat molt en la perspectiva anomenada "process-centric" (centrada en processos) o "activity-centric" (centrada en activitats), que posa l'èmfasi en la seqüència d'activitats o tasques que s'han d'executar, ignorant en gran mesura les dades necessàries per dur a terme aquestes tasques. Per altra banda, la perspectiva "artifact-centric" (centrada en artefactes) o "data-centric" es basa en definir les dades que necessiten les tasques i els detalls de les tasques en si, representant els canvis que aquestes fan a les dades. El framework BALSA defineix quatre dimensions que haurien de representar-se en qualsevol model artifact-centric: els artefactes de negoci (business artifacts), els cicles de vida (lifecycles), els serveis (services) i les associacions (associations). Utilitzant diferents tipus de models per representar aquestes dimensions porta a obtenir diverses representacions amb característiques diferents. Aquesta varietat de característiques farà que els models resultants siguin més apropiats per un propòsit o per un altre. Considerant això, en la primera part d'aquesta tesi proposem un framework, BAUML, per modelar processos de negoci seguint una perspectiva artifact-centric. El framework es basa en utilitzar una combinació de models UML i OCL, i el seu objectiu és obtenir una representació final del procés que sigui a la vegada comprensible i formal, per tal d'evitar ambigüitats i errors. Un cop definit el procés, és important assegurar-ne la qualitat. Això evitarà la propagació d'errors a la implementació final del procés. Malgrat que hi ha molts criteris de qualitat diferents, ens centrarem en la correctesa semàntica del model, per respondre a preguntes com ara "representa la realitat correctament?" o "conté errors o contradiccions?". En conseqüència, la segona part d'aquesta tesi se centra en buscar una manera per determinar la correctesa semàntica d'un model BAUML. Ens interessa considerar el model com un tot, incloent el significat de les tasques (és a dir, el detall del que fan). Per aconseguir-ho, primer traduïm les tasques a un framework reconegut, DCDSs (Data-centric Dynamic Systems). Un cop obtingut, s'hi poden aplicar tècniques de model-checking per determinar si compleix certes propietats. Malauradament, els DCDSs s'han definit a nivell teòric i no hi ha cap eina que els implementi. Per aquest motiu, hem creat un prototip d'eina, AuRUS-BAUML, que és capaç de traduir els nostres models BAUML a lògica i aplicar-hi tècniques de raonament per determinar-ne la correctesa semàntica. Per la part de raonament, l'AuRUS-BAUML fa servir una eina existent, l'SVTe. La integració entre l'AuRUS-BAUML i l'SVTe és transparent de cara a l'usuari. Lògicament, la tesi també presenta la traducció a lògica que porta a terme l'eina

    Artifact-centric business process models in UML : specification and reasoning

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    Business processes are directly involved in the achievement of an organization's goals, and for this reason they should be performed in the best possible way. Modeling business processes can help to achieve this as, for instance, models can facilitate the communication between the people involved in the process, they provide a basis for process improvement and they can help perform process management. Processes can be modeled from many different perspectives. Traditional process modeling has followed the process-centric (or activity-centric) perspective, where the focus is on the sequencing of activities (i.e. the control flow), largely ignoring or underspecifying the data required by these tasks. In contrast, the artifact-centric (or data-centric) approach to process modeling focuses on defining the data required by the tasks and the details of the tasks themselves in terms of the changes they make to the data. The BALSA framework defines four dimensions which should be represented in any artifact-centric business process model: business artifacts, lifecycle, services (i.e. tasks) and associations. Using different types of models to represent these dimensions will result in distinct representations, whose differing characteristics (e.g. the degree of formality or understandability) will make them more appropriate for one purpose or another. Considering this, in the first part of this thesis we propose a framework, BAUML, for modeling business processes following an artifact-centric perspective. This framework is based on using a combination of UML and OCL models, and its goal is to have a final representation of the process which is both understandable and formal, to avoid ambiguities and errors. However, once a process model has been defined, it is important to ensure its quality. This will avoid the propagation of errors to the process's implementation. Although there are many different quality criteria, we focus on the semantic correctness of the model, answering questions such as "does it represent reality correctly?" or "are there any errors and contradictions in it?". Therefore, the second part of this thesis is concerned with finding a way to determine the semantic correctness of our BAUML models. We are interested in considering the BAUML model as a whole, including the meaning of the tasks. To do so, we first translate our models into a well-known framework, a DCDS (Data-centric Dynamic System) to which then modelchecking techniques can be applied. However, DCDSs have been defined theoretically and there is no tool that implements them. For this reason, we also created a prototype tool, AuRUS-BAUML, which is able to translate our BAUML models into logic and to reason on their semantic correctness using an existing tool, SVTe. The integration between AuRUS-BAUML and SVTe is transparent to the user. Logically, the thesis also presents the logic translation which is performed by the tool.Els processos de negoci estan directament relacionats amb els objectius de negoci, i per tant és important que aquests processos es duguin a terme de la millor manera possible. Optar per modelar-los pot ajudar a aconseguir-ho, ja que els models proporcionen nombrosos avantatges. Per exemple: faciliten la comunicació entre les parts involucrades en el procés, proporcionen una base a partir del qual millorar-lo, i poden ajudar a gestionar-lo. Els processos es poden modelar des de diferents perspectives. El modelat tradicional de processos s'ha basat molt en la perspectiva anomenada "process-centric" (centrada en processos) o "activity-centric" (centrada en activitats), que posa l'èmfasi en la seqüència d'activitats o tasques que s'han d'executar, ignorant en gran mesura les dades necessàries per dur a terme aquestes tasques. Per altra banda, la perspectiva "artifact-centric" (centrada en artefactes) o "data-centric" es basa en definir les dades que necessiten les tasques i els detalls de les tasques en si, representant els canvis que aquestes fan a les dades. El framework BALSA defineix quatre dimensions que haurien de representar-se en qualsevol model artifact-centric: els artefactes de negoci (business artifacts), els cicles de vida (lifecycles), els serveis (services) i les associacions (associations). Utilitzant diferents tipus de models per representar aquestes dimensions porta a obtenir diverses representacions amb característiques diferents. Aquesta varietat de característiques farà que els models resultants siguin més apropiats per un propòsit o per un altre. Considerant això, en la primera part d'aquesta tesi proposem un framework, BAUML, per modelar processos de negoci seguint una perspectiva artifact-centric. El framework es basa en utilitzar una combinació de models UML i OCL, i el seu objectiu és obtenir una representació final del procés que sigui a la vegada comprensible i formal, per tal d'evitar ambigüitats i errors. Un cop definit el procés, és important assegurar-ne la qualitat. Això evitarà la propagació d'errors a la implementació final del procés. Malgrat que hi ha molts criteris de qualitat diferents, ens centrarem en la correctesa semàntica del model, per respondre a preguntes com ara "representa la realitat correctament?" o "conté errors o contradiccions?". En conseqüència, la segona part d'aquesta tesi se centra en buscar una manera per determinar la correctesa semàntica d'un model BAUML. Ens interessa considerar el model com un tot, incloent el significat de les tasques (és a dir, el detall del que fan). Per aconseguir-ho, primer traduïm les tasques a un framework reconegut, DCDSs (Data-centric Dynamic Systems). Un cop obtingut, s'hi poden aplicar tècniques de model-checking per determinar si compleix certes propietats. Malauradament, els DCDSs s'han definit a nivell teòric i no hi ha cap eina que els implementi. Per aquest motiu, hem creat un prototip d'eina, AuRUS-BAUML, que és capaç de traduir els nostres models BAUML a lògica i aplicar-hi tècniques de raonament per determinar-ne la correctesa semàntica. Per la part de raonament, l'AuRUS-BAUML fa servir una eina existent, l'SVTe. La integració entre l'AuRUS-BAUML i l'SVTe és transparent de cara a l'usuari. Lògicament, la tesi també presenta la traducció a lògica que porta a terme l'eina.Postprint (published version

    Creating Digital Editions for Corpus Linguistics : The case of Potage Dyvers, a family of six Middle English recipe collections

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    This thesis presents a corpus-linguistically oriented digital documentary edition of six 15th-century culinary recipe collections, known as the Potage Dyvers family, with an introduction to its historical context and an analysis of its dialectal and structural features, and defines an editorial framework for producing such editions for the purposes of corpus linguistic research. Traditionally historical corpora have been compiled from printed editions not originally designed to serve as corpus linguistic data. Recently, both the digitalisation of textual editing and the turning of corpus compilers towards original sources have blurred the boundaries between these two crafts, placing corpus compilers into an editorial role. Despite the fact that traditional editorial approaches have been recognised as largely incompatible with the needs of linguistic research, and the established methods of corpus encoding do not satisfactorily represent the documentary context of manuscript texts, no explicitly linguistic editorial approach has so far been designed for editing manuscript sources for use in corpora. Even most digital editions, despite their advanced representational capabilities, are literary or historical in orientation and thus do not provide an adequate model. The editorial framework described here and the edition based on it have been explicitly designed to answer the needs of historical corpus linguistics. First, it aims at faithfully modelling the manuscript as a historical artefact, including both its textual content and its visual and material paratext, whose communicative importance has also been recognised by many historical linguists. Second, it presents this model in a form which allows not only the study of both text and paratext using corpus linguistic methods, but also allows resulting analytical metadata to be linked back to the edition, shared with other scholars, and used as the basis for further study. The edition itself is provided as a digital appendix to the thesis in the form of both a digital data archive encoded in TEI XML and three editorial presentations of this data, and serves not only as a demonstration of the editorial approach, but also provides a valuable new research resource. The choice of material is based on the insight that utilitarian texts like recipes provide valuable material especially for historical pragmatics and discourse studies. As one of the first vernacular text types, recipes also provide an excellent opportunity to study the diachronic development of a single textual genre. The Potage Dyvers family is the second largest known family of Middle English recipe collections, surviving in six physically diverse manuscripts. Of these, four were edited in 1888 by conflating them into two collections, but their complex interrelationships have so far escaped systematic study. The structural analysis of the six Potage Dyvers versions indicates that the family, containing a total of 371 unique recipes, in fact consists of three sibling pairs of MSS. Two of these contain largely the same material but in a different order, while the third shares only a core of 89 recipes with the others, deriving a large number of recipes from other sources. In terms of their language, all of the six versions exhibit mainly Midlands forms and combine dialectally unmarked forms with more local variants from different areas, reflecting the 15th-century loss of dialectal distinctions which has not yet reached orthographic or morphological uniformity, and indicating possible metropolitan associations.Tämä väitöskirja tarjoaa korpuslingvistisesti suuntautuneen digitaalisen tekstiedition kuudesta samankaltaisesta 1400-luvun englanninkielisestä ruokareseptikokoelmasta, jotka tunnetaan nimellä Potage Dyvers. Väitöskirja sisältää johdannon tekstien historialliseen kontekstiin sekä murrepiirteisiin ja tekstirakenteeseen pohjautuvat analyysit niiden todennäköisestä alkuperästä ja keskinäisistä suhteista. Väitöskirja kartoittaa historiallisen kielentutkimuksen käsikirjoituseditiolle asettamat vaatimukset ja määrittelee yksityiskohtaisen ohjeiston niiden täyttämiseksi. Historialliset tekstikorpukset on perinteisesti koottu digitoimalla painettuja tekstieditioita joita ei ole suunniteltu kielitieteelliseksi aineistoksi. Viime vuosina tekstieditioiden digitaalistuminen ja korpuslingvistien lisääntynyt kiinnostus alkuperäisiä dokumenttilähteitä kohtaan ovat häivyttäneet tekstieditoinnin ja kielikorpusten kokoamisen välistä rajaa. Vaikka yhtäältä perinteisten editointimenetelmien ongelmat kielentutkimuksen suhteen ja toisaalta aiempien historiallisten kielikorpusten tapa jättää huomiotta käsikirjoitustekstien materiaalinen konteksti on havaittu ongelmallisiksi, ei historiallisten käsikirjoituslähteiden esittämiseen tekstikorpuksissa ole kehitetty juurikaan menetelmiä. Väitöskirjan sisältämä ja kuvaama editio on suunniteltu erityisesti historiallisen korpuslingvistiikan tarpeisiin. Se pyrkii mallintamaan käsikirjoituksen historiallisena esineenä, tallentaen digitaalisesti paitsi tekstin, myös sen viestinnällisen merkityksen kannalta olennaisen materiaalisen kontekstin. Tämä malli esitetään muodossa, joka mahdollistaa paitsi sekä tekstin että materiaalisen kontekstin tutkimisen korpusmenetelmin, myös tutkimuksen tuloksena syntyvän metatiedon liittämisen alkuperäiseen editioon ja käyttämisen myöhemmän tutkimuksen pohjana. Itse editio joka toimii paitsi esimerkkinä editointimenetelmän käytöstä, myös itsessään arvokkaana tutkimusaineistona sisältyy väitöskirjan digitaalisiin liitteisiin sekä TEI XML -muotoisena digitaalisena data-arkistona että kolmessa erilaisessa esitysmuodossa. Keskiaikaiset reseptitekstit on valittu edition aineistoksi, koska niiden kaltaiset käytännölliset tekstit ovat arvokasta materiaalia esimerkiksi historialliselle pragmatiikalle ja diskurssintutkimukselle. Yhtenä vanhimmista kansankielisistä tekstilajeista reseptit myös tarjoavat erinomaisen tilaisuuden yksittäisen tekstilajin historiallisen kehityksen tutkimiseen. Kuutena eri versiona säilynyt Potage Dyvers on toiseksi suurin keskienglanninkielisten reseptikokoelmien ryhmä. Sen neljästä versiosta on olemassa vuonna 1888 julkaistu editio jossa ne esitettiin kahtena erillisenä tekstinä, mutta versioiden välisiä monimutkaisia suhteita ei ole tutkittu järjestelmällisesti. Versioiden välinen rakenneanalyysi osoittaa, että tämä yhteensä 371 ainutkertaista reseptiä sisältävä ryhmä koostuu itse asiassa kolmesta keskenään samankaltaisten kokoelmien parista. Näistä pareista kaksi sisältävät pääosin samat reseptit mutta hyvin eri järjestyksessä, kun taas kolmas jakaa muiden kanssa vain 89 reseptiä joihin se yhdistää suuren määrän reseptejä muista lähteistä. Kieleltään kaikki kuusi versiota edustavat pääosin Midlandsin alueen kielimuotoa, mutta murteellisesti värittömien muotojen suosiminen ja yhdistyminen useiden eri alueiden paikallisiin piirteisiin heijastaa 1400-luvulla tapahtunutta kieliasun yhtenäistymistä edeltävää murre-erojen tasaantumista, ja on erityisen tyypillistä Lontoon suurkaupunkialueen kielimuodolle

    Preface to IWCMQ 2003

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