Keyword-Based Search of Workflow Fragments and Their Composition

LNCS, volume 10190; TCCI, volume 10190Workflow specification, in science as in business, can be a difficult task, since it requires a deep knowledge of the domain to be able to model the chaining of the steps that compose the process of interest, as well as awareness of the computational tools, e.g., services, that can be utilized to enact such steps. To assist designers in this task, we investigate in this paper a methodology that consists in exploiting existing workflow specifications that are stored and shared in repositories, to identify workflow fragments that can be re-utilized and re-purposed by designers when specifying new workflows. Specifically, we present a method for identifying fragments that are frequently used across workflows in existing repositories, and therefore are likely to incarnate patterns that can be reused in new workflows. We present a keyword-based search method for identifying the fragments that are relevant for the needs of a given workflow designer. We go on to present an algorithm for composing the retrieved fragments with the initial (incomplete) workflow that the user designed, based on compatibility rules that we identified, and showcase how the algorithm operates using an example from eScience

Aligning Textual and Graphical Descriptions of Processes Through ILP Techniques

With the aim of having individuals from different backgrounds and expertise levels examine the operations in an organization, different representations of business processes are maintained. To have these different representations aligned is not only a desired feature, but also a real challenge due to the contrasting nature of each process representation. In this paper we present an efficient technique for aligning a textual description and a graphical model of a process. The technique is grounded on using natural language processing techniques to extract linguistic features of each representation, and encode the search as a mathematical optimization encoded using Integer Linear Programming (ILP) whose resolution ensures an optimal alignment between both descriptions. The technique has been implemented and the experiments witness the significance of the approach with respect to the state-of-the-art technique for the same task.Peer Reviewe

Graph-Based Process Model Matching

Nowadays organizations acquire multiple repositories with process specifications. Organization stakeholders such as business analysts and process designers need to have access and retrieve such information as it is proven that adapting existing business processes in order to meet current business needs is more effective and less error-prone than developing them from scratch. This thesis concentrates on process retrieval and will propose a business process searching mechanism, taking advantage and extending existing graph based matching techniques, with the aim to exploit the knowledge that already exists within an organization. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Report: The process model matching contest 2013

Process model matching refers to the creation of correspondences between activities of process models. Applications of process model matching are manifold, reaching from model validation over harmonization of process variants to effective management of process model collections. Recently, this demand led to the development of different techniques for process model matching. Yet, these techniques are heuristics and, thus, their results are inherently uncertain and need to be evaluated on a common basis. Currently, however, the BPM community lacks established data sets and frameworks for evaluation. The Process Model Matching Contest 2013 aimed at addressing the need for effective evaluation by defining process model matching problems over published data sets. This paper summarizes the setup and the results of the contest. Besides a description of the contest matching problems, the paper comprises short descriptions of all matching techniques that have been submitted for participation. In addition, we present and discuss the evaluation results and outline directions for future work in this field of research. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014