Data in Business Process Models. A Preliminary Empirical Study

Traditional activity-centric process modeling languages treat data as simple black boxes acting as input or output for activities. Many alternate and emerging process modeling paradigms, such as case handling and artifact-centric process modeling, give data a more central role. This is achieved by introducing lifecycles and states for data objects, which is beneficial when modeling data-or knowledge-intensive processes. We assume that traditional activity-centric process modeling languages lack the capabilities to adequately capture the complexity of such processes. To verify this assumption we conducted an online interview among BPM experts. The results not only allow us to identify various profiles of persons modeling business processes, but also the problems that exist in contemporary modeling languages w.r.t. The modeling of business data. Overall, this preliminary empirical study confirms the necessity of data-awareness in process modeling notations in general

Phase 1 Trial of Vaccination with Autologous Tumor Cells and Antisense Directed Against the Insulin Growth Factor Type 1 Receptor (IGF-1R AS ODN) in Patients with Recurrent Glioblastoma

Background: Extending a previous Phase I study, we report the results of a second Phase I autologous tumor cell vaccination trial for patients with recurrent glioblastomas (IND 14379-101, NCT01550523). Methods: Following surgery, subjects were treated by 24 hour implantation in the rectus sheath of ten biodiffusion chambers containing irradiated autologous tumor cells and IGF-1R AS ODN with the objective of stimulating tumor immunity. Patients were monitored for safety, clinical and radiographic as well as immune responses. Results: There were no Grade 3 toxicities related to protocol treatment and overall median survival from initial diagnosis was 91.4 weeks. Two protocol survival cohorts with median survivals of 48.2 and 10 weeks were identified and predicted by our pre-treatment assessments of immune function, corroborated by post-vaccination pro-inflammatory cytokine profiles. Longer survival subjects had imaging findings including transient elevations in cerebral blood volume (rCBV) and sustained elevations of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) interpreted as transient hyperemia and cell loss. Conclusions: The vaccine paradigm was well-tolerated with a favorable median survival. Our data support this as a novel treatment paradigm that promotes anti-tumor immunity

Flexible Data Acquisition in Object-aware Process Management

Abstract. Data-centric approaches to business process management, in general, no longer require specific activities to be executed in a certain order, but instead data values must be present in business objects for a successful completion. While this holds the promise of more flexible processes, the addition of the data perspective results in increased complexity. Therefore, data-centric approaches must be able to cope with the increased complexity, while still fulfilling the promise of more flexible processes. Object-aware process management specifies business processes in terms of objects as well as their lifecycle processes. Lifecycle processes determine how an object acquires all necessary data values. As data values are not always available in the order the lifecycle process of an object requires, the lifecycle process must be able to flexibly handle these deviations. Object-aware process management provides operational semantics with flexible data acquisition built into it, instead of tasking the process modeler with pre-specifying a flexible process. At the technical level, the flexible data acquisition is accomplished with process rules

Enabling Ad-Hoc Changes to Object-Aware Processes

Abstract--- Contemporary process management systems support users during the execution of repetitive, predefined business processes. However, when unforeseen situations occur, which are not part of the process model serving as the template for process execution, contemporary process management technology is often unable to offer adequate user support. One solution to this problem is to allow for ad-hoc changes to process models, i.e., changes that may be applied on the fly to a running process instance. As opposed to the widespread activity-centric process modeling paradigm, for which the support of instance-specific ad-hoc changes is well researched, albeit not supported by most commercial solutions, there is no corresponding support for ad-hoc changes in other process support paradigms, such as artifact-centric or object-aware process management. This paper presents concepts for supporting such ad-hoc changes in object-aware process management, and gives insights into the challenges we tackled when implementing this kind of process flexibility in the PHILharmonicFlows process execution engine. The development of such advanced features is highly relevant for data-centric BPM, as the research field is generally perceived as having low maturity when compared to activity-centric BPM

A Tool for Supporting Ad-Hoc Changes to Object-Aware Processes

Process management systems are often criticized for not being flexible enough, as they restrict the actions of users to those defined in a process model. When unforeseen events occur during process execution, deviation from the actions the process model permits may become necessary. Such ad-hoc changes to process execution are not widely supported by process management systems as they pose significant challenges. This work presents a new prototypical addition to the PHILharmonicFlows process engine that allows for ad-hoc changes to processes following the object-aware process support paradigm. We demonstrate the extensions to the preexisting PHILharmonicFlows modeling and runtime user interfaces that enable users to change the underlying process models of process instances they are executing. The demonstration is intended to not only show off the ad-hoc change capabilities in the context of object-ware process management, but also inspire other researchers to employ similar ideas in other process support paradigms