APQL: A process-model query language

As business process management technology matures, organisations acquire more and more business process models. The management of the resulting collections of process models poses real challenges. One of these challenges concerns model retrieval where support should be provided for the formulation and efficient execution of business process model queries. As queries based on only structural information cannot deal with all querying requirements in practice, there should be support for queries that require knowledge of process model semantics. In this paper we formally define a process model query language that is based on semantic relationships between tasks in process models and is independent of any particular process modelling notation

An Architecture for Querying Business Process, Business Process Instances, and Business Data Models

Business data are usually managed by means of business processes during process instances. These viewpoints (business, instances and data) are strongly related because the life-cycle of business data objects need to be aligned with the business process and process instance models. However, current approaches do not provide a mechanism to integrate these three viewpoints nor to query them all together while maintaining the information in the distributed, heterogeneous systems where they have been created. In this paper, we propose the integration of the business process, business process instance, and business data models by using their metamodels and also an architecture to support this integration. The goal of this integration is to make the most of the three models and the technologies that support them in an isolated way. In our approach, it is not necessary to change the source data formats nor transforming them into a common one. Furthermore, the proposed architecture allows us to query the three models even though they come from three di�erent technologies

An Architecture for Querying Business Process, Business Process Instances, and Business Data Models

Business data are usually managed by means of business processes during process instances. These viewpoints (business, instances and data) are strongly related because the life-cycle of business data objects need to be aligned with the business process and process instance models. However, current approaches do not provide a mechanism to integrate these three viewpoints nor to query them all together while maintaining the information in the distributed, heterogeneous systems where they have been created. In this paper, we propose the integration of the business process, business process instance, and business data models by using their metamodels and also an architecture to support this integration. The goal of this integration is to make the most of the three models and the technologies that support them in an isolated way. In our approach, it is not necessary to change the source data formats nor transforming them into a common one. Furthermore, the proposed architecture allows us to query the three models even though they come from three different technologies.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2015-63502-C3-2-RMinisterio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2013-40848-RMinisterio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2016-75394-

PQL - A Descriptive Language for Querying, Abstracting and Changing Process Models

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAISs) has resulted in large process repositories comprising large and complex process models. To enable context-specific perspectives on these process models and related data, a PAIS should provide techniques for the flexible creation and change of process model abstractions. However, existing approaches focus on the formal model transformations required in this context rather than on techniques for querying, abstracting and changing the process models in process repositories. This paper presents a domain-specific language for querying process models, describing abstractions on them, and defining process model changes in a generic way. Due to the generic approach taken, the definition of process model abstractions and changes on any graph-based process notation becomes possible. Overall, the presented language provides a key component for process model repositories

Improving the Usability of OCL as an Ad-hoc Model Querying Language

Abstract. The OCL is often perceived as difficult to learn and use. In previous research, we have defined experimental query languages exhibiting higher levels of usability than OCL. However, none of these alternatives can rival OCL in terms of adoption and support. In an attempt to leverage the lessons learned from our research and make it accessible to the OCL community, we propose the OCL Query API (OQAPI), a library of query-predicates to improve the user-friendliness of OCL for ad-hoc querying. The usability of OQAPI is studied using controlled experiments. We find considerable evidence to support our claim that OQAPI facilitates user querying using OCL.

Business process model repositories : efficient process retrieval

As organizations increasingly work in process-oriented manner, the number of business process models that they develop and have to maintain increases. As a consequence, it has become common for organizations to have collections of hundreds or even thousands of business process models. When a collection contains such a large number of business process models, it is impossible to manage that collection manually. Therefore, Business Process (BP) Model Repositories are required that store large collections of process models and provide techniques for managing these collections automatically and efficiently. The goal of research described in this thesis is to improve on existing BP Model Repositories, by improving the management techniques that are supported by these repositories on an aspect that has received little attention so far. Looking ahead at the results of the research, the aspect that will be selected for improvement is the process retrieval aspect. The two main research activities that will be carried in the context of this research are the following. Firstly, a survey of Business Process Model Repositories is performed to identity an unsolved aspect to be enhanced. The functionality of existing BP Model Repositories is listed and summarized as a framework for BP Model Repositories. After comparing the functionality that is provided by existing BP Model Repositories, based on the framework, efficient process retrieval is selected as the aspect that will be improved. This aspect is selected, because, although existing BP Model Repositories provide techniques for process retrieval, none of them focus on the efficiency of process retrieval. Secondly, an indexing technique for process retrieval (both process similarity search and process querying) is proposed. The index is constructed using features of process models. Features are small and characteristic fragments of process models. As such, by matching features of a given query/search model and features of a process model in a collection, a small set of models in the collection that potentially match the query/search model can be retrieved efficiently through the index. Techniques are also proposed to further check whether a potential match is an actual match for the query/search model. All of the above techniques are implemented as a component of the AProMoRe (an Advanced Process Model Repository) process repository. To evaluate the proposed process retrieval techniques, experiments are run using both real-life and synthetic process model collections. Experimental results show that on average the process retrieval techniques proposed in this thesis performs at least one order of magnitude faster than existing techniques

Context-Aware Querying and Injection of Process Fragments in Process-Aware Information Systems

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are often customized to meet customer needs and, hence, exhibit a large number of hard-/software configuration variants. Consequently, the processes deployed on a CPS need to be configured to the respective CPS variant. This includes both configuration at design time (i.e., before deploying the implemented processes on the CPS) and runtime configuration taking the current context of the CPS into account. Such runtime process configuration is by far not trivial, e.g., alternative process fragments may have to be selected at certain points during process execution of which one fragment is then dynamically applied to the process at hand. Contemporary approaches focus on the design time configuration of processes, while neglecting runtime configuration to cope with process variability. In this paper, a generic approach enabling context-aware process configuration at runtime is presented. With the Process Query Language process fragments can be flexibly selected from a process repository, and then be dynamically injected into running process instances depending on the respective contextual situations. The latter can be automatically derived from context factors, e.g., sensor data or configuration parameters of the given CPS. Altogether, the presented approach allows for a flexible configuration and late composition of process instances at runtime, as required in many application domains and scenarios

05061 Abstracts Collection -- Foundations of Semistructured Data

From 06.02.05 to 11.02.05, the Dagstuhl Seminar 05061 ``Foundations of Semistructured Data\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

Workflow repository for providing configurable workflow in ERP

Workflow pada ERP dengan domain fungsi yang besar rentan dengan adanya duplikasi. Membuat workflow repository yang menyimpan berbagai macam workflow dari proses bisnis ERP yang dapat digunakan untuk menyusun workflow baru sesuai kebutuhan tenant baru Metode yang diusulkan: Metode yang diusulkan terdiri dari 2 tahapan, preprocessing dan processing. Tahap preprocessing bertujuan untuk mencari common dan sub variant dari existing workflow variant. Workflow variant yang disimpan oleh pengguna adalah Procure to Pay workflow. Variasi tersebut diseleksi berdasarkan kemiripannya dengan similarity filtering, kemudian dimerge untuk mencari common dan sub variantnya. Common dan sub variant disimpan menggunakan metadata yang dipetakan pada basis data relasional. Deteksi common dan sub variant workflow mencapai tingkat akurasi sebesar 92%. Ccommon workflow terdiri dari 3-common dari 8-variant workflow. Common workflow tersebut memiliki tingkat kompleksitas lebih rendah 10% dari model sebelumnya. Tahapan processing adalah tahapan penyediaan configurable workflow. Pengguna memasukan query model untuk mencari workflow yang diinginkan. Dengan menggunakan metode similarity filtering, didapatkan common dan/atau sub variant yang memungkinkan. Pengguna dapat menggunakan common workflow melalui workflow designer untuk melakukan rekomposisi ulang. Penyediaan configurable workflow oleh ERP mencapai tingkat 100% dimana apapun yang diinginkan pengguna dapat disediakaan workflownya oleh ERP, ataupun sebagai dasar membentuk workflow yang lain. Berdasarkan hasil percobaan, tempat penyimpanan workflow dapat dibangun dengan arsitektur yang diajukan dan mampu menyimpan dan menyediakan workflow. Tempat penyimpanan ERP mampu mendeteksi workflow yang bersifat common dan sub variant. Tempat penyimpanan ERP mampu menyediakan configurable workflow, dimana pengguna dapat memanfaatkan common dan sub variant workflow untuk menjadi dasar mengkomposisi workflow yang lain. =================================================================================================== Workflow in ERP which covered big domain faced duplication issues. Scope of this research was developing workflow from business process ERP which could be used for required workflow as user needs. Proposed approach consisted of 2 stages preprocessing and processing. Preprocessing stages aimed for finding common and variant of sub workflow based on existing workflow variant. The workflow variants that were stored by user were procured to pay workflow. The workflows was filtered by similarity filtering method then merged for identifying the common and variant of sub workflow. The common and sub variant workflow were stored using metadata that mapped into relational database. The common and variant of sub workflow detection achieved 92% accuracy. The common workflow consisted of 3- the common workflow from 8-variant workflow. The common workflow has 10% lesser complexity than its predecessor. Processing was providing configurable workflow. User inputted query model to find required workflow. Utilizing similarity filtering, possible the common and variant of sub workflow was collected. User used the common workflow through workflow designer to recompose. Providing configurable workflow ERP achieved 100%, where any user need would be provided by ERP, as workflow or as based template for creating other. Based on evaluation, repository was built based on proposed architecture and was able to store or provide workflow. Repository detected workflow whether common or variant of sub workflow. Repository ERP was able to provide configurable ERP, where user utilized common and variant of sub workflow as based for creating one of their need