Patterns-based Evaluation of Open Source BPM Systems: The Cases of jBPM, OpenWFE, and Enhydra Shark

In keeping with the proliferation of free software development initiatives and the increased interest in the business process management domain, many open source workflow and business process management systems have appeared during the last few years and are now under active development. This upsurge gives rise to two important questions: what are the capabilities of these systems? and how do they compare to each other and to their closed source counterparts? i.e. in other words what is the state-of-the-art in the area?. To gain an insight into the area, we have conducted an in-depth analysis of three of the major open source workflow management systems - jBPM, OpenWFE and Enhydra Shark, the results of which are reported here. This analysis is based on the workflow patterns framework and provides a continuation of the series of evaluations performed using the same framework on closed source systems, business process modeling languages and web-service composition standards. The results from evaluations of the three open source systems are compared with each other and also with the results from evaluations of three representative closed source systems - Staffware, WebSphere MQ and Oracle BPEL PM, documented in earlier works. The overall conclusion is that open source systems are targeted more toward developers rather than business analysts. They generally provide less support for the patterns than closed source systems, particularly with respect to the resource perspective which describes the various ways in which work is distributed amongst business users and managed through to completion

Patterns-based evaluation of open source BPM systems : the cases of jBPM, OpenWFE, and Enhydra Shark

The abundance of approaches towards business process specification and enactment is well-known and is an ongoing source of confusion. One of the objectives of the Workflow Patterns Initiative is to provide insights into comparative strengths and weaknesses of the state-of-the-art in Process Aware Information Systems (PAISs).Over the past years many approaches to business process specification including commercial offerings, modelling languages, and academic prototypes have been evaluated in terms of the patterns in order to assess their capabilities in terms of expressing control-flow dependencies, data manipulation and resource allocation directives. With the increasing maturity and popularity of open source software it seems opportune to take a closer look at such offerings in the Business Process Management (BPM) area. This report provides a patterns-based evaluation of three well-known open source workflow management systems: jBPM, OpenWFE, and Enhydra Shark

Virtual learning process environment (VLPE): a BPM-based learning process management architecture

E-learning systems have significantly impacted the way that learning takes place within universities, particularly in providing self-learning support and flexibility of course delivery. Virtual Learning Environments help facilitate the management of educational courses for students, in particular by assisting course designers and thriving in the management of the learning itself. Current literature has shown that pedagogical modelling and learning process management facilitation are inadequate. In particular, quantitative information on the process of learning that is needed to perform real time or reflective monitoring and statistical analysis of students’ learning processes performance is deficient. Therefore, for a course designer, pedagogical evaluation and reform decisions can be difficult. This thesis presents an alternative e-learning systems architecture - Virtual Learning Process Environment (VLPE) - that uses the Business Process Management (BPM) conceptual framework to design an architecture that addresses the critical quantitative learning process information gaps associated with the conventional VLE frameworks. Within VLPE, course designers can model desired education pedagogies in the form of learning process workflows using an intuitive graphical flow diagram user-interface. Automated agents associated with BPM frameworks are employed to capture quantitative learning information from the learning process workflow. Consequently, course designers are able to monitor, analyse and re-evaluate in real time the effectiveness of their chosen pedagogy using live interactive learning process dashboards. Once a course delivery is complete the collated quantitative information can also be used to make major revisions to pedagogy design for the next iteration of the course. An additional contribution of this work is that this new architecture facilitates individual students in monitoring and analysing their own learning performances in comparison to their peers in a real time anonymous manner through a personal analytics learning process dashboard. A case scenario of the quantitative statistical analysis of a cohort of learners (10 participants in size) is presented. The analytical results of their learning processes, performances and progressions on a short Mathematics course over a five-week period are also presented in order to demonstrate that the proposed framework can significantly help to advance learning analytics and the visualisation of real time learning data

A Workflow Visual Modeler and Its Interface to Existing Workflow Management Systems

The rapid growth and complexity of today\u27s businesses have created a need for business process management approaches that will promote the efficient functioning of these organizations. Users of business process management tools greatly benefit from using visual process modeling capabilities. Cross-business interaction sets forth the need for standardization of notations in designing these models. The goal of this thesis is to study state of the art business process management notations and state of the art diagramming frameworks associated with building a Visual Modeler that can be easily integrated with existing workflow management systems. This thesis presents a Visual Modeler that has been created based on the research findings. Two case studies are presented, which show how the modeler has been effectively integrated as part of two completely different workflow management systems

Systematische Prozessunterstützung für die Entwicklung laufzeitkritischer Softwaresysteme: Systematische Prozessunterstützung für die Entwicklung laufzeitkritischer Softwaresysteme: PROKRIS-Methodik und -Framework

In vielen Bereichen des täglichen Lebens, angefangen vom Online-Banking bis hin zur Steuerung im Flugzeug, kommt Software mit laufzeitkritischen nicht-funktionalen Eigenschaften (NFE) zum Einsatz. Die Erfüllung der NFE spielt in diesen Anwendungen eine zentrale Rolle. Um dies zu erreichen, ist eine systematische und zielorientierte Behandlung dieser Anforderungen während der Entwicklung zwingend erforderlich. NFE zeichnen sich im Gegensatz zu funktionalen Eigenschaften durch besondere Merkmale aus, die ein adaptives Vorgehen zur Definition des Entwicklungsprozesses erzwingen. In der Arbeit wird eine Methodik zur kontextbasierten Anpassung von Vorgehensmodellen an laufzeitkritische NFE auf der Basis von Prozessmustern sowie das PROKRIS-Framework als unterstützende Umgebung vorgestellt

Model-Driven Management of Internal Controls for Business Process Compliance

The thesis tackles the problem of high effort for achieving business process compliance to regulations in the area of Enterprise Risk Management. Common to these regulations are requirements on the presence of effective internal controls in companies. The level of automation with regard to translating compliance requirements into a set of internal controls and assuring the effectiveness of these controls during execution of business processes is raised thorugh a novel model-driven approach