Run-Time Auditing for Business Processes Data Using Constraints

Business processes involve data that can be modified or up dated by various activities. These data must satisfy the business rules associated to the process. These data are normally stored in a rela tional database, and hence the database has to be analyzed to determine whether the business rules can be satisfied. This paper presents a framework including a run-time auditing layer where the correctness of a database can be analyzed at different check points of a business process according to the data flow. It provides an early detection of incorrect action on stored data. Furthermore, in or der to manage the current business rules, the use of the constraint pro gramming paradigm is proposed and the enlargement of the Constraint Database Management Systems to support business rulesJunta de Andalucía P08-TIC-04095Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2009-1371

Fault diagnosis in databases for business processes

Business processes involve data that can be modified or updated by various activities. These data must satisfy the business rules associated to the process. As the information treated in a business process tends to be extensive, data are normally stored in a relational database, and hence the database has to be analyzed to determine whether the business rules are satisfied and what values are incorrect. This paper proposes the use of model-based diagnosis in the business processes scenario. This scenario combines business processes, business rules, relational databases and where the faults are the instances of the variables introduced by the users. These considerations make it necessary to introduce a new way for representing the model, and the design of new algorithms to solve it. This model provides a means for the detection of incorrect tuples of different tables of the database by avoiding the analysis of the full database. Furthermore, in order to manage the current business rules, the use of a constraint paradigm is proposed and by using Max- CSPs to isolate incorrect values.Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-04095Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2009-1371

Business Process Configuration According to Data Dependency Specification

Configuration techniques have been used in several fields, such as the design of business process models. Sometimes these models depend on the data dependencies, being easier to describe what has to be done instead of how. Configuration models enable to use a declarative representation of business processes, deciding the most appropriate work-flow in each case. Unfortunately, data dependencies among the activities and how they can affect the correct execution of the process, has been overlooked in the declarative specifications and configurable systems found in the literature. In order to find the best process configuration for optimizing the execution time of processes according to data dependencies, we propose the use of Constraint Programming paradigm with the aim of obtaining an adaptable imperative model in function of the data dependencies of the activities described declarative.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2015-63502-C3-2-RFondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regiona

Developing a labelled object-relational constraint database architecture for the projection operator

Current relational databases have been developed in order to improve the handling of stored data, however, there are some types of information that have to be analysed for which no suitable tools are available. These new types of data can be represented and treated as constraints, allowing a set of data to be represented through equations, inequations and Boolean combinations of both. To this end, constraint databases were defined and some prototypes were developed. Since there are aspects that can be improved, we propose a new architecture called labelled object-relational constraint database (LORCDB). This provides more expressiveness, since the database is adapted in order to support more types of data, instead of the data having to be adapted to the database. In this paper, the projection operator of SQL is extended so that it works with linear and polynomial constraints and variables of constraints. In order to optimize query evaluation efficiency, some strategies and algorithms have been used to obtain an efficient query plan. Most work on constraint databases uses spatiotemporal data as case studies. However, this paper proposes model-based diagnosis since it is a highly potential research area, and model-based diagnosis permits more complicated queries than spatiotemporal examples. Our architecture permits the queries over constraints to be defined over different sets of variables by using symbolic substitution and elimination of variables.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología DPI2006-15476-C02-0

Distributed Model-Based Diagnosis using Object-Relational Constraint Databases

This work presents a proposal to diagnose distributed systems utilizing model-based diagnosis using distributed databases. In order to improve aspects as versatility, persistence, easy composition and efficiency in the diagnosis process we use an Object Relational Constraint Database (ORCDB). Thereby we define a distributed architecture to store the behaviour of components as constraints in a relational database to diagnose a distributed system. This work proposes an algorithm to detect which components fail when their information is distributed in several databases, and all the information is not available in a global way. It is also offered a proposal to define, in execution time, the allocation of the sensors in a distributed system.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología DPI2003-07146-C02-0

Applying Constraint Databases in the Determination of Potential Minimal Conflicts to Polynomial Model-Based Diagnosis

Model-based Diagnosis allows the identification of the parts which fail in a system. The models are based on the knowledge of the system to diagnose, and may be represented by constraints associated to the components. The variables of these constraints can be observable or non-observable, depending on the situation of the sensors. In order to obtain the potential minimal diagnosis in a system, an important issue is related to finding out the potential minimal conflicts in an efficient way. We consider that Constraint Databases represent an excellent option in order to solve this problem in complex systems. In this work we have used a novel logical architecture of Constraint Databases which has allowed obtaining these potential conflicts by means of the corresponding queries. Moreover, we have considered Gröbner Bases as a projection operator to obtain the potential minimal conflicts of a system. The first results obtained on this work, which are shown in a heat exchangers example, have been very promising.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología DPI2003-07146-C02-0

NMUS: Structural Analysis for Improving the Derivation of All MUSes in Overconstrained Numeric CSPs

Models are used in science and engineering for experimentation, analysis, model-based diagnosis, design and planning/sheduling applications. Many of these models are overconstrained Numeric Constraint Satisfaction Problems (NCSP), where the numeric constraints could have linear or polynomial relations. In practical scenarios, it is very useful to know which parts of the overconstrained NCSP instances cause the unsolvability. Although there are algorithms to find all optimal solutions for this problem, they are computationally expensive, and hence may not be applicable to large and real-world problems. Our objective is to improve the performance of these algorithms for numeric domains using structural analysis. We provide experimental results showing that the use of the different strategies proposed leads to a substantially improved performance and it facilitates the application of solving larger and more realistic problems.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia DIP2006-15476-C02-0

Model-Driven Engineering for Constraint Database Query Evaluation

Data used in applications such as CAD, CAM or GIS are complex, but the techniques developed for their treatment and stor age are not adapted enough to their needs. Examples of these types of data are spatiotemporal, scientific, economic or industrial information, in which data has not a single value because is defined by parameters, variables, functions, equations . . .. These complex data cannot be repre sented nor evaluated with the relational algebra types, then a new, more complex, data type is needed, the Constraint type. Constraint Databases were defined and implemented in order to handle this type of constraint data. When a Constraint Database is implemented, different configura tion parameters can be set up, depending on which database manager is going to be used, which constraint programming tool is going to solve the query evaluation, or which type of constraints can be involved. When some of these parameters are changed, the implementation that supports the evaluation of queries over constraints have to be changed too. For this reason, we propose the use of Model-Driven Engineering to model the queries over Constraint Databases in an independent way of the im plementation and the techniques used to evaluate the queries.Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-04095Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2009-13714Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2010- 21744-C02-0

Extending BPMN 2.0 for Modelling the Combination of Activities That Involve Data Constraints

The combination of activities to achieve optimal goals sometimes has a complex solution. Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) 2.0 facilitates the modelling of business processes by providing new artifacts, such as various types of tasks, source of data and relations between tasks. Sometimes, although the order of the activities can be known, the concrete data values that the activities interchange to optimize their behaviour needs to be found, specially when input parameters of an activity affect to the input parameter of the others. Taking into account the lack of priority and clear sequential relationship between the activities of such combination, a deep analysis of possible models and data input values for the activities is necessary. For that reason, an extension of BPMN 2.0 with a new type of sub-process and its associated marker is proposed. The aim of this new sub-process is to define, in an easy way, a combination of several activities to find out, in an automated way, the concrete values of the data handling that optimize an overall objective.Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-04095Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2009-1371

Hybrid business process modeling for the optimization of outcome data

Context: Declarative business processes are commonly used to describe permitted and prohibited actions in a business process. However, most current proposals of declarative languages fail in three aspects: (1) they tend to be oriented only towards the execution order of the activities; (2) the optimization is oriented only towards the minimization of the execution time or the resources used in the business process; and (3) there is an absence of capacity of execution of declarative models in commercial Business Process Management Systems. Objective: This contribution aims at taking into account these three aspects, by means of: (1) the formalization of a hybrid model oriented towards obtaining the outcome data optimization by combining a data-oriented declarative specification and a control-flow-oriented imperative specification; and (2) the automatic creation from this hybrid model to an imperative model that is executable in a standard Business Process Management System. Method: An approach, based on the definition of a hybrid business process, which uses a constraint programming paradigm, is presented. This approach enables the optimized outcome data to be obtained at runtime for the various instances. Results: A language capable of defining a hybrid model is provided, and applied to a case study. Likewise, the automatic creation of an executable constraint satisfaction problem is addressed, whose resolution allows us to attain the optimized outcome data. A brief computational study is also shown. Conclusion: A hybrid business process is defined for the specification of the relationships between declarative data and control-flow imperative components of a business process. In addition, the way in which this hybrid model automatically creates an entirely imperative model at design time is also defined. The resulting imperative model, executable in any commercial Business Process Management System, can obtain, at execution time, the optimized outcome data of the process.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2009-1371