Change Support in Process-Aware Information Systems - A Pattern-Based Analysis

In today's dynamic business world the economic success of an enterprise increasingly depends on its ability to react to changes in its environment in a quick and flexible way. Process-aware information systems (PAIS) offer promising perspectives in this respect and are increasingly employed for operationally supporting business processes. To provide effective business process support, flexible PAIS are needed which do not freeze existing business processes, but allow for loosely specified processes, which can be detailed during run-time. In addition, PAIS should enable authorized users to flexibly deviate from the predefined processes if required (e.g., by allowing them to dynamically add, delete, or move process activities) and to evolve business processes over time. At the same time PAIS must ensure consistency and robustness. The emergence of different process support paradigms and the lack of methods for comparing existing change approaches have made it difficult for PAIS engineers to choose the adequate technology. In this paper we suggest a set of changes patterns and change support features to foster the systematic comparison of existing process management technology with respect to process change support. Based on these change patterns and features, we provide a detailed analysis and evaluation of selected systems from both academia and industry. The identified change patterns and change support features facilitate the comparison of change support frameworks, and consequently will support PAIS engineers in selecting the right technology for realizing flexible PAIS. In addition, this work can be used as a reference for implementing more flexible PAIS

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

Identifying and Evaluating Change Patterns and Change Support Features in Process-Aware Information Systems.

In order to provide effective support, the introduction of process-aware information systems (PAIS) must not freeze existing business processes. Instead PAIS should allow authorized users to flexibly deviate from the predefined processes if required and to evolve business processes in a controlled manner over time. Many software vendors promise flexible system solutions for realizing such adaptive PAIS, but are often unable to cope with fundamental issues elated to process change (e.g., correctness and robustness). The existence of different process support paradigms and the lack of methods for comparing existing change approaches makes it difficult for PAIS engineers to choose the adequate technology. In this paper we suggest a set of changes patterns and change support features to foster systematic comparison of existing process management technology with respect to change support. Based on these change patterns and features, we provide a detailed analysis and evaluation of selected systems from both academia and industry

Business Process Visualization - Use Cases, Challenges, Solutions

The proper visualization and monitoring of their (ongoing) business processes is crucial for any enterprise. Thus a broad spectrum of processes has to be visualized ranging from simple, short–running processes to complex long–running ones (consisting of up to hundreds of activities). In any case, users shall be able to quickly understand the logic behind a process and to get a quick overview of related tasks. One practical problem arises when different fragments of a business process are scattered over several systems where they are often modeled using different process meta models (e.g., High–Level Petri Nets). The challenge is to find an integrated and user–friendly visualization for these business processes. In this paper we discover use cases relevant in this context. Since existing graph layout approaches have focused on general graph drawing so far we further develop a specific approach for layouting business process graphs. The work presented in this paper is embedded within a larger project (Proviado) on the visualization of automotive processes

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

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

A Formal Framework for Adaptive Access Control Models.

For several reasons enterprises are frequently subject to organizational change. Respective adaptations may concern business processes, but also other components of an enterprise architecture. In particular, changes of organizational structures often become necessary. The information about organizational entities and their relationships is maintained in organizational models. Therefore the quick and correct adaptation of these models is fundamental to adequately cope with organizational changes. However, model changes alone are not sufficient to guarantee consistency. Since organizational models also provide the basis for defining access rules (e.g., actor assignments in workflow management systems or access rules in document-centered applications) this information has to be adapted accordingly (e.g., to avoid dangling references or non-resolvable actor assignments). Current approaches do not adequately address this problem, which often leads to security gaps and delayed change implementation. In this paper we introduce a formal framework for the controlled evolution of organizational models and related access rules. Firstly, we introduce a set of operators with well-defined semantics for defining and changing organizational models. Secondly, we show how to define access rules based on such models. In this context we also define a notion of correctness for access rules. Thirdly, we present a formal framework for the (semi-automated) adaptation of access rules when the underlying organizational model is changed by exploiting the semantics of the applied changes. Altogether the presented approach provides an important contribution for realizing adaptive access control frameworks

On Design Principles for Realizing Adaptive Service Flows with BPEL.

Web service technology offers a promising approach for realizing enterprise-wide and cross-organizational business applications. With the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL, also known as WS-BPEL or BPEL4WS) a powerful language for the process-oriented composition and orchestration of Web services exists. However, BPEL flow specifications tend to be too complex, and current BPEL engines do not provide the flexibility needed to cover the broad spectrum of business processes we have to deal with in practice. Neither ad-hoc deviations form the pre-specified BPEL schema (e.g., to add or move activities for single flow instances) nor the propagation of BPEL schema changes to a collection of flow instances have been supported by BPEL engines yet. This limits their applicability to only well structured, rigid service flows. In this paper we address fundamental issues, which arise when enriching BPEL engines with dynamic change capabilities. We focus on the question how such changes can be realized in a correct and consistent manner and which prerequisites must be met in this context. In particular, we restrict BPEL to a reasonable subset of language elements in order to decide on these fundamental questions. By offering flexibility and adaptability in a controlled and reliable way the so promising Web Service technology will broaden its application scope significantly