A Query Language for Workflow Logs

A workflow methodology is required to analyze business logic and model workflow components. Current studies handle business process modeling and workflow modeling in an independent manner, making it hard to analyze the information system and organization requirements while modeling business logic. Moreover, current methodologies also lack support for modeling complex dynamic processes in adaptive workflows. In this chapter, a methodology is proposed to unify business process modeling and workflow automation. The information system and organization perspectives of workflow are identified in each development phase. An analysis of the domain and an object notation in the methodology can help to build a stable system.

A simulation-based decision support system for business process planning

To support and drive a business process with a software system means influencing the way process participants conduct their daily work. An analysis of the relationships between organizational processes, support systems, and process participants calls for a continuous alignment and parallel evolution of the intended business process and the supporting software system. Here, the primary information needed is how process participants work with the new system and where and why they deviate from the intended process. Delta analysis with workflow logs employs workflow logs recorded during system use to compare process enactment with its prescription: log entries are related with instances of business process activities of an explicit process definition, and the timely ordering of these entries is compared with the ordering of the activities implied by the process model. If the orderings comply, the log fits the model. Log entries and activities can be on arbitrary levels of abstraction and arbitrary granularity. The results of such an analysis can be utilized as an unbiased data basis for further discussions. Moreover, compared with traditional approaches such as interviews and observations, time and costs can be saved. The paper presents the concept, a feasibility study, some aspects of the related theoretical challenges, a prototypical implementation, and initial case study results.

At present, workflow technology has become a research hotspot in computer application domain, one of its major theoretical research areas is to build a formal model with which process definition, process execution and process analysis are well supported. Workflow process logic (workflow logic) specifies the causality among activities of process model. By dissecting common workflow patterns, synchronic distance of Petri net synchronic theory is used to specify workflow logic. As a start, the background of this paper, i.e. P/T system based hierarchical formal workflow model - procedure net, is briefly introduced, workflow logic is the basic layer of the hierarchical model. Then, the fact that synchronic distance has enough capability to specify workflow logic is proved, and the specification of well-defined workflow logic is given. Finally, Petri net representation of workflow logic is proposed based on the works above.

We present a simple, unified approach for the analysis and optimization of object field and array element accesses in strongly typed languages, that works in the presence of object references/pointers. This approach builds on Array SSA form [14], a uniform representation for capturing control and data flow properties at the level of array elements. The techniques presented here extend previous analyses at the array element level [15] to handle both array element and object field accesses uniformly.

In services-oriented agile supply chain management, more and more complex business process require for automatic and flexible ability to react to the dynamic market environ- ment. In this paper, we proposed the distributed and adaptive workflow model and implementation. The workflow model focus on the BPEL4WS based workflow composition, the DAIM-S based business domain ontology, XSRL based business process monitoring and workflow performance, semantic ECA based workflow exception handling, and petri net based workflow analyzing. In the final, we proposed intelligence multi-agents based distributed and adaptive workflow model implementation. I. INTRODUCTION Business organizations confront an increased global com- petition, which forces companies to improve their efficiency and flexibility for adapting the dynamic business environment. The agility of a company's response to customer demand has been recognized as a critical success factor to meet the global competition. Agile supply chain management has become an effective and significant measure to enhance competitive advantage of modern enterprises (1)(2). To satisfy and respond quickly to the business requirements, we proposed loosing coupled services-oriented agile supply chain management ar- chitecture. At the same time, more and more complex business process require for automatic and flexible ability to react to dynamic market and strengthen their ability to compete in global business society. To meet such requirement, we pro- posed a distributed and adaptive workflow model in services- oriented agile supply chain management. In this model, we apply BPEL4WS as services workflow definition language to composite the complex business process, and discussed the DAIM-S based business domain ontology, XSRL based business process monitoring and workflow performance, se- mantic ECA based workflow exception handling, and Petri net based workflow analyzing. In the final, We also proposed the coordinated intelligent agents based distributed and adaptive workflow implementations in services-oriented agile supply chain management.

Many requirements for a business process depend on the workflow execution data that includes common data for all the population of processes, state of resources, state of processes, etc. The natural way to specify and implement such requirements is to put them into the process definition. In order to do it, we need: (1) a generalised workflow metamodel that includes data on the workflow environment, process definitions, and process execution; (2) a powerful and flexible query language addressing the metamodel; (3) integration of a query language with a business process definition language. In this paper the mentioned workflow metamodel together with the business process query language BPQL is presented. BPQL is integrated with the XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) increasing significantly its expressiveness and flexibility. We also present practical results for application of the proposed language in the OfficeObjects® WorkFlow system.

Web service composition involves the combination of a number of existing web services to create a value-added one. WS-BPEL is a promising language which describes Web service composition in form of business processes. However, WS-BPEL is an XML-based language and may suffer from ambiguities or some erroneous properties. The analysis and verification of business processes specified in WS-BPEL by a formal method has been a hot topic in the research community lately. In this paper, we propose a method to model and analyze WS-BPEL business processes based on ServiceNet, a special class of Petri nets. Unlike most of the existing work which analyze only control flow properties of WS-BPEL business processes but neglect data flow properties, our method models and analyzes both control properties and data properties of WS-BPEL business processes. We present the transformation rules of WS-BPEL business processes into ServiceNet and enrich the reduction rules of ServiceNet by applying them in some practical projects. Then the throughness of a business processes can be verified by reducing its ServiceNet representation based on some reduction rules. Moreover, we define some data-aspect properties of WS-BPEL business processes and give the corresponding checking algorithm.

The existing Workflow Management Systems, WfMS (ACTIONTm, Xsoft InConcert, Team Ware) show some insufficient due essentially to two factors. First, the enterprises express a real need of WfMS that deal with flexible business processes. These later must adapt to the optimization of enterprises work methods and the evolution of their needs. Second, the enterprises also need of control mechanisms and modeling tools for their WfMS in order to design robust workflow models assuring an efficient and flexible processing of errors and exceptions of execution. In others words, the WfMS must deal with Workflow mining to support Business Processes Re-engineering (BPR). A BPR is a method to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of business processes. Existing propositions in the literature are rather dedicated to the process perspective mining and they neglect the discovering of organizational perspective although it is decisive for the enhancement of existing workflow or the proposing of a new Workflow. The paper addresses the workflow mining by considering the organizational perspective. By organizational perspective, we mean the organizational structures (Federation, Hierarchical, Market and so on) and interaction protocols (Contract net, Auction...) describing respectively the forms of work and the activities allocation process between actors. This paper defends the idea that organizational dimension in multi-agent system is an appropriate approach to discover this organizational perspective since it (i) provides inter-agents communication languages based on performatives which allow capturing the semantic of exchanges between actors, (ii) it introduces organizational structures to highlight the forms of work and (iii) it offers powerful interactions protocols which permit to identify the dynamic organizational structures. First, this paper proposes a Workflow log meta-model which extends the classical one. Then, it provides some algorithms to permit the discovering of the main organizational structures and interaction protocols. Third, it presents the Management process of Water distribution crisis case study to illustrate our approach. Finally, the paper describes the developed prototype, called DiscopFlow, in order to validate the proposed solution.

Originating from a pragmatic need to document strategies for modelling recurrent business scenarios, collections of workflow patterns have been proposed in the business process management community. The concrete applications of these workflow patterns in forward engineering have been extensively explored. Conversely, the core concern of business process archaeology is on recovering business process models from legacy systems utilizing reverse engineering methods. Little attention is given to the relationship between business process recovery and workflow patterns. This chapter aims to give a compact introduction to workflow control-flow patterns, workflow data patterns, workflow exception patterns, and service interaction patterns. In particular, the feasibility of combining workflow patterns with business process archaeology is examined by drawing on the research results of the MARBLE framework.

A rule-based approach to proactive exception handling in business processes

We proposed, in previous works, a business process execution language for data-driven workflow modeling, verification, and execution; the proposed model can present both control flow and shared data in workflow processes. It can be analyzed to verify its correctness before its deployment. In this paper, we are going to improve the semantics of our approach to allow better integration between data and control flow, and between the workflow and its external environment (such as relational databases and XML documents). We are also going to extend our approach to generate multidimensional data models, namely OLAP hypercubes, from data handled by the workflow, in order to provide synthetic view of data for decision makers.

Case handling: a new paradigm for business process support

Structuring an organization around its business processes has many benefits for both the processes themselves as well as the workflow and business process management within an organization in general. However, there are many challenges that make such a transition from a classical hierarchic to a state-of-the-art process organization difficult. In particular, traditional departments often resist loss of autonomy within their organization and, thus, may prevent successful implementation of business process management techniques such as process-oriented workflow management systems. Therefore, this paper proposes a flexible workflow management system architecture consisting of multiple parts that can be replicated and distributed within an organization's private cloud network. Based on distributed components of a workflow management system, it supports both organizations with legacy organizational structures as well as those which require increased autonomy of their respective organizational units. As a result, this system allows, on the one hand side, to manage some organizational units independently and to regulate them in a distributed, process-driven way while, on the other, still allowing the overall organization to exploit many advantages of a centralized workflow management system. The resulting system is based on experiences of a DFG funded technology transfer project aiming at applying previous research results in autonomous business process management to practical needs and requirements of a real production system application.

We present a language for property specification for workflows and a tool for property checks. The language is based on the Propositional Linear Temporal Logic and the structure of workflow logs. These language and tool help companies to diagnose business processes, react to changes in business environment and collect formal definitions of business properties. We give examples of specifications of business properties that set relations between events of business processes