Towards a pivotal-based approach for business process alignment.

This article focuses on business process engineering, especially on alignment between business analysis and implementation. Through a business process management approach, different transformations interfere with process models in order to make them executable. To keep the consistency of process model from business model to IT model, we propose a pivotal metamodel-centric methodology. It aims at keeping or giving all requisite structural and semantic data needed to perform such transformations without loss of information. Through this we can ensure the alignment between business and IT. This article describes the concept of pivotal metamodel and proposes a methodology using such an approach. In addition, we present an example and the resulting benefits

Evolution of Software Engineering in the Changing Scenario of Modern Hardware Architecture, Semantic Web and Cloud Computing Platform

Traditional way of software engineering is no longer fully suitable in the changing scenario of modern hardwareand software architecture of parallel and distributed computing on Semantic web and Cloud computing platform. A parallelhardware architecture can support high performance computing but needs changes in programming style. Also the capabilityof Semantic web can link everything on the internet making an interoperable intelligent system. And with this capabilitymany beneficial business models like Web services and Cloud computing platform have been conceptualized. Cloudcomputing is the most anticipated future trend of computing. These changes in hardware and software architecture means weneed to re-visit the traditional software engineering process models meant for a single computer system. This paper firstsurveys the evolution of hardware architecture, newer business models, newer software applications and then analyses theneed for changes in software engineering process models to leverage all the benefits of the newer business models. Thispaper also emphasizes the vulnerability of the web applications and cloud computing platform in terms of risk managementof web applications in general and privacy and security of customer information in shared cloud platform which maythreaten the adoption of the cloud platform.Keywords/Index Terms— Agile Process Model , Cloud Computing Platform, Privacy and Security Issues, RiskManagement, Semantic Web, Software Evolution

Loki : the semantic wiki for collaborative knowledge engineering

We present Loki, a semantic wiki designed to support the collaborative knowledge engineering process with the use of software engineering methods. Designed as a set of DokuWiki plug-ins, it provides a variety of knowledge representation methods, including semantic annotations, Prolog clauses, and business processes and rules oriented to specific tasks. Knowledge stored in Loki can be retrieved via SPARQL queries, in-line Semantic MediaWiki-like queries, or Prolog goals. Loki includes a number of useful features for a group of experts and knowledge engineers developing the wiki, such as knowledge visualization, ontology storage, or code hint and completion mechanism. Reasoning unit tests are also introduced to validate knowledge quality. The paper is complemented by the formulation of the collaborative knowledge engineering process and the description of experiments performed during Loki development to evaluate its functionality. Loki is available as free software at https://loki.re

Effects of Semantic Quality in Business Process Modeling

In contrast to the increasing meaning of business process management (BPM), there is a lack of knowledge about processes that impedes their analysis, implementation, and execution in business process management systems (BPMS). In this context, process modeling is an opportunity to capture process knowledge. Nevertheless, models are incomplete concerning semantic completeness. Therefore, ontologies as explicit and formal specification are used to enrich models semantically to achieve a high degree of semantic quality, model efficiency and effectiveness. But also ontology engineering needs models to describe the underlying discourse of universe. For this reason, it is the paper’s goal to examine and compare the Resource Event Agent Model (REA) with respect to semantic quality, model effectiveness, and -efficiency in data modeling for ontologies. Moreover, the paper addresses the research question, if REA enables an effective modeling to reduce the precision deficit and complexity in BPM. Keywords (Required

Developing a Business Application with BPM and MDE

In this paper we have designed an architecture for the generation of a business application, that allows to business users to adapt their processes to the constant change. At the moment all the architectures based to a great extent on SOA allow to modify the processes in a short period of time, but we go beyond and give the possibility to the business user of modifying their processes. To design this architecture, we rely on the fundamental use of two technologies: BPM (Business Process Modeling) and MDE (Model Driven Engineering). Inside these technologies we focus on the creation of a business process notation extended from BPMN that is agile, easy to learn and design, and capable to provide semantic information about the process. Therefore this notation allows business process to modify their processes to achieve the proposed goal

A pivotal-based approach for enterprise business process and IS integration

A company must be able to describe and react against any endogenous or exogenous event. Such flexibility can be achieved through business process management (BPM). Nevertheless a BPM approach highlights complex relations between business and IT domains. A non-alignment is exposed between heterogeneous models: this is the 18business-IT gap 19 as described in the literature. Through concepts from business engineering and information systems driven by models and IT, we define a generic approach ensuring multi-view consistency. Its role is to maintain and provide all information related to the structure and semantic of models. Allowing the full return of a transformed model in the sense of reverse engineering, our platform enables synchronisation between analysis model and implementation model

Semantic derivation of enterprise information architecture from riva-based business process architecture

Contemporary Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA) design practice in the industry still suffers from issues that hamper the investment in the EIA design. First and foremost of these issues is the shortcoming of EIA design research to bridge the gap between business and systems (or information) architectures. Secondly, contemporary developed business process architecture methods, and in particular object-based ones have not been fully exploited for EIA design and thus widening the gap between business processes and systems. In practice, knowledge-driven approaches have been thoroughly influencing EIA design. Thirdly, the lack of using knowledge representation methods adversely affected the automation (or semi-automation) of the EIA design process. Software Engineering (SE) technologies and Knowledge Representation using ontologies continue to prove instrumental in the design of domain knowledge. Finally, current EIA development methods have often resulted in complex designs that hampered both adopting and exploiting EIA in medium to large scale organisations.This research is aimed at investigating the derivation of the EIA from a given semantic representation of object-based Business Process Architecture (BPA), and in particular Riva-based BPA using the design science research-based methodology. The key design artefact of this research is the development of the BPAOntoEIA framework that semantically derives EIA from a semantic representation of Riva-based BPA of an enterprise. In this framework, EIA elements were derived from the semantic Riva BPA elements and associated business process models, with forward and backward traceability from/to the derived EIA to/from the original BPA. The BPAOntoEIA framework has been evaluated using the semantic Cancer Care and Registration BPA in Jordan. This framework has been validated using an authentic concern-based evaluation framework employing both static and dynamic validation approaches.The BPAOntoEIA framework contributes to bridging the gap between the business and systems world by providing a business/IT alignment through the EIA derivation process, and using the semantic knowledge of business processes within the resultant EIA. A major novel contribution is the introduction of new evaluation metrics for EIA design, which are quantitative, and are not only indicative of the quality of the semantic EIA derivation from the associated BPA but also the extent of utilisingbusiness process knowledge and traceability amongst EIA elements.Amongst other novel contributions is the semantic EIA derivation process that comprises a suite of the Semantic Web Rules Language (SWRL) rules applied on the semantic BPA elements. The derivation scheme utilises the generic EIA (gEIAOnt) ontology that was developed in this research and represents a semantic meta-model of EIA elements of a generic enterprise. The resultant EIA provides a highly coherent semantic information model that is in-line with the theory of EIA design, semantically enriched, and fully utilises the semantic knowledge of business processes.Benefits of this research to industry include the semantic EIA derivation process and a resultant information model that utilises the semantic information of business processes in the enterprise. Therefore, this enables the enterprise strategic management to plan for a single, secure and accessible information resource that is business process driven, and enabled in an agile environment. The semantic enrichment of the EIA is a starting point for a simplistic design of a domain-independent semantic enterprise architecture for the development of systems of systems in loosely coupled enterprises

An Integrated Service-Oriented Development Platform for Realization of e-Business Systems

Enterprises need to be responsive to meet dynamic businesses and requirements. Service-oriented architecture can improve e-Business applications in integration and flexibility. Therefore, service-oriented architecture has been envisioned as an appropriate computational paradigm for e-business applications. This paper proposes a multi-model driven collaborative development platform for building service-oriented e-Business systems. The platform supports service-oriented software engineering and application developments. It employs three views, i.e., business view, process view, and service view to support business and technical consultants’ operations. Consultants can collaborate from distributed sites of, e.g., clients and IT vendors to provide their clients’ with rapid system development and demonstration. The proposed platform is service-oriented and driven by three models, i.e., service meta-model, process model and business model. All of these three models are supported by a semantic reasoning engine to facilitate intelligent service discovery, process execution and business-business integration. A simple example has been used to demonstrate its functionality