On the Modeling of Correct Service Flows with BPEL4WS

Frameworks for composing Web Services offer a promising approach for realizing enterprise-wide and cross-organizational business applications. With BPEL4WS a powerful composition language exists. BPEL implementations allow orchestrating complex, stateful interactions among Web Services in a process-oriented way. One important task in this context is to ensure that respective flow specifications can be correctly processed, i.e., there will be no bad surprises (e.g., deadlocks, invocation of service operations with missing input data) at runtime. In this paper we subdivide BPEL schemes into different classes and discuss to which extent instances of these classes can be analyzed for the absence of control flow errors and inconsistencies. Altogether our work shall contribute to a more systematic evolution of the BPEL standard instead of overloading it with too many features

ADEPT - Next Generation Process Management Technology

In the ADEPT project we have been working on the design and implementation of a next generation process management technology for several years. Based on a conceptual framework for dynamic process changes, on innovative process support functions, and on advanced implementation concepts, the developed system enables the realization of adaptive, process-aware information systems (PAIS). Basically, process changes can take place at the process type as well as the process instance level: Changes of single process instances may have to be carried out in an ad-hoc manner (e.g., to deal with an exceptional situation) and must not affect system robustness and consistency. Process type changes, in turn, must be quickly accomplished in order to adapt the PAIS to business process changes. This may also include the migration of (thousands of) instances to the new process schema (if desired). Important requirements are to perform respective migrations on-the-fly, to preserve correctness, and to avoid performance penalties

ADEPT2 - Next Generation Process Management Technology

If current process management systems shall be applied to a broad spectrum of applications, they will have to be significantly improved with respect to their technological capabilities. In particular, in dynamic environments it must be possible to quickly implement and deploy new processes, to enable ad-hoc modifications of single process instances at runtime (e.g., to add, delete or shift process steps), and to support process schema evolution with instance migration, i.e., to propagate process schema changes to already running instances. These requirements must be met without affecting process consistency and by preserving the robustness of the process management system. In this paper we describe how these challenges have been addressed and solved in the ADEPT2 Process Management System. Our overall vision is to provide a next generation process management technology which can be used in a variety of application domains

Guarded Process Spaces (GPS): A Navigation System towards Creation and Dynamic Change of Healthcare Processes from the End-User’s Perspective

Efficient process management becomes increasingly crucial for hospitals to survive on a competitive market. Process management in this domain must comply with individual conditions of patients and quickly react to changing requirements and organizational parameters. With Guarded Process Spaces (GPS) we developed a formally based concept that makes it possible to enable end-users to create and flexibly change processes themselves. Our approach makes use of existing BPM technology while abstracting from technical interfaces and system-specific modeling paradigms. In this way, it provides the basis to gain user acceptance and to achieve technological independence

ADEPT2 – Ein adaptives Prozess-Management-System der nächsten Generation.

Prozess-Management-Systeme müssen gegenüber dem heutigen Stand der Technik erheblich leistungsfähiger werden, um für ein wirklich breites Anwendungsspektrum einsetzbar zu sein: Neue Prozesse müssen sehr viel rascher implementierbar sein, zur Laufzeit müssen bei Bedarf Ad-hoc-Abweichungen vom modellierten Prozessschema unterstützt werden und bei Änderungen am Prozessschema selbst, müssen die bereits laufenden Prozessinstanzen – falls erforderlich – systemseitig auf das neue Schema migriert werden können; und dies alles unter systemseitiger Zusicherung von Konsistenz und Robustheit der (weiteren) Prozessausführung. Der Beitrag beschreibt, wie diese Herausforderungen und Probleme im ADEPT2-System adressiert bzw. gelöst werden

How Advanced Change Patterns Impact the Process of Process Modeling

Process model quality has been an area of considerable research efforts. In this context, correctness-by-construction as enabled by change patterns provides promising perspectives. While the process of process modeling (PPM) based on change primitives has been thoroughly investigated, only little is known about the PPM based on change patterns. In particular, it is unclear what set of change patterns should be provided and how the available change pattern set impacts the PPM. To obtain a better understanding of the latter as well as the (subjective) perceptions of process modelers, the arising challenges, and the pros and cons of different change pattern sets we conduct a controlled experiment. Our results indicate that process modelers face similar challenges irrespective of the used change pattern set (core pattern set versus extended pattern set, which adds two advanced change patterns to the core patterns set). An extended change pattern set, however, is perceived as more difficult to use, yielding a higher mental effort. Moreover, our results indicate that more advanced patterns were only used to a limited extent and frequently applied incorrectly, thus, lowering the potential benefits of an extended pattern set

Supporting Data Collection in Complex Scenarios with Dynamic Data Collection Processes

Nowadays, companies have to report a large number of data sets (e.g., sustainability data) regarding their products to different legal authorities. However, in today's complex supply chains products are the outcome of the collaboration of many companies. To gather the needed data sets, companies have to employ cross-organizational and long-running data collection processes that imply great variability. To support such scenarios, we have designed a lightweight, automated approach for contextual process configuration. That approach can capture the contextual properties of the respective situations and, based on them, automatically configure a process instance accordingly, even without human involvement. Finally, we implemented our approach and started an industrial evaluation

Change Patterns in Use: A Critical Evaluation

Process model quality has been an area of considerable research efforts. In this context, the correctness-by-construction principle of change patterns provides promising perspectives. However, using change patterns for model creation imposes a more structured way of modeling. While the process of process modeling (PPM) based on change primitives has been investigated, little is known about this process based on change patterns. To obtain a better understanding of the PPM when using change patterns, the arising challenges, and the subjective perceptions of process designers, we conduct an exploratory study. The results indicate that process designers face little problems as long as control-flow is simple, but have considerable problems with the usage of change patterns when complex, nested models have to be created. Finally, we outline how effective tool support for change patterns should be realized.This research is supported by Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P23699-N23.Weber, B.; Pinggera, J.; Torres Bosch, MV.; Reichert, M. (2013). Change Patterns in Use: A Critical Evaluation. En Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling, BPMDS 2013. Springer Verlag. 261-276. https://doi.org/11007/978-3-642-38484-4_19S26127

A mobile-based solution for supporting end-users in the composition of services

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11042-016-3910-4Currently, technologies and applications evolve to create eco-systems made up of a myriad of heterogeneous and distributed services that are accessible anytime and anywhere. Even though these services can be used individually, it is their coordinated and combined usage what provide an added value to end-users. In addition, user¿s wide adoption of mobile devices for daily activities have fostered a shift in the role played by end-users towards Internet data and services. However, existing solutions to service composition are not targeted to ordinary end-users. More easy-to-use tools have to be offered to end-users to make sure that they are successfully accepted and used by them. To this end, the work presented in this paper supports end-users in the creation of service compositions by using mobile devices. 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Meta-All: a system for managing metabolic pathway information

BACKGROUND: Many attempts are being made to understand biological subjects at a systems level. A major resource for these approaches are biological databases, storing manifold information about DNA, RNA and protein sequences including their functional and structural motifs, molecular markers, mRNA expression levels, metabolite concentrations, protein-protein interactions, phenotypic traits or taxonomic relationships. The use of these databases is often hampered by the fact that they are designed for special application areas and thus lack universality. Databases on metabolic pathways, which provide an increasingly important foundation for many analyses of biochemical processes at a systems level, are no exception from the rule. Data stored in central databases such as KEGG, BRENDA or SABIO-RK is often limited to read-only access. If experimentalists want to store their own data, possibly still under investigation, there are two possibilities. They can either develop their own information system for managing that own data, which is very time-consuming and costly, or they can try to store their data in existing systems, which is often restricted. Hence, an out-of-the-box information system for managing metabolic pathway data is needed. RESULTS: We have designed META-ALL, an information system that allows the management of metabolic pathways, including reaction kinetics, detailed locations, environmental factors and taxonomic information. Data can be stored together with quality tags and in different parallel versions. META-ALL uses Oracle DBMS and Oracle Application Express. We provide the META-ALL information system for download and use. In this paper, we describe the database structure and give information about the tools for submitting and accessing the data. As a first application of META-ALL, we show how the information contained in a detailed kinetic model can be stored and accessed. CONCLUSION: META-ALL is a system for managing information about metabolic pathways. It facilitates the handling of pathway-related data and is designed to help biochemists and molecular biologists in their daily research. It is available on the Web at and can be downloaded free of charge and installed locally