Schema Evolution in Object and Process-Aware Information Systems: Issues and Challenges

Process aware information system (PAIS) is important in the recent business environment. Developments of PAIS need to consider contexts about technical and business elements. They are needed to develop PAIS effectively (e.g. monitoring environment and constructing adequate business process). Process mining is an important method for analyzing a business environment and utilizing PAIS development and improvement. LTL checking is an important method for checking a specific property to be satisfied with business processes, but correctly writing formal language like LTL is difficult. In this paper, we use LTL checking and prediction based on decision-tree learning for checking goal achievement, false detection and oversight detection. It helps writing properly LTL formula for representing the correct goal property. We conducted a case study using a real life log of traffic fine management process in Italy.

Enterprise information systems created with model-driven software engineering methods need to handle not only data but also business processes in an automated way. This paper shows how to engineer process-aware information systems following the model-driven and generative software engineering paradigms. Existing approaches realize either the generation of automated or manual activities but do not employ model-driven engineering of all system aspects through systematic language composition. A generative approach that additionally uses process modeling languages allows developers to evolve generated data-centric information systems into process-aware information systems. To be usable within our generation process, we have developed a textual BPMN version and a corresponding language tooling to check the soundness of the models. We have included these process models into the generation process of an information system together with other domain-specific modeling languages, e.g., for data structures, and generate an extendable, process-aware information system that is open for continuous regeneration and hand-written additions. This approach allows us to lift a generated data-centric information system to a process-aware information system. Agile development enabled through the opportunity to validate assumptions automatically and adapt changes efficiently, enhances the engineering process as well as the generated systems themselves.

The increasing adoption of Process-aware Information Systems (PAISs), together with the variability of Business Processes (BPs) across different application contexts, has resulted in large process model repositories with collections of related process model variants. To reduce both costs and occurrence of errors, the explicit management of variability throughout the BP lifecycle becomes crucial. In literature, several proposals dealing with BP variability have been proposed. However, the lack of a method for their systematic comparison makes it difficult to select the most appropriate one meeting current needs best. To close this gap, this work presents an evaluation framework that allows analyzing and comparing the variability support provided by existing proposals developed in the context of BP variability. The framework encompasses a set of language requirements as well as a set of variability support features. While language requirements allow assessing the expressiveness required to explicitly represent variability of different process perspectives, variability support features reflect the tool support required to properly cover such expressiveness. Our evaluation framework has been derived based on an in-depth analysis of several large real-world process scenarios, an extensive literature review, and an analysis of existing PAISs. In this vein, the framework helps to understand BP variability along the BP lifecycle. In addition, it supports PAISs engineers in deciding, which of the existing BP variability proposals meets best their needs.

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAISs) has resulted in a large number of implemented business processes. To react on changing needs, companies should be able to quickly adapt these process implementations if required. Current PAISs, however, only provide mechanisms to evolve the schema of a process model, but do not allow for the automated creation and adaptation of their user interfaces (UIs). The latter may have a complex logic and comprise, for example, conditional elements or database queries. Creating and evolving the UI components of a PAIS manually is a tedious and error-prone task. This technical report introduces a set of patterns for transforming fragments of a business process model, whose activities are performed by the same user role, to UI components of the PAIS. In particular, UI logic can be expressed using the same notation as for process modeling. Furthermore, a transformation method is introduced, which applies these patterns to automatically derive UI components from a process model by establishing a bidirectional mapping between process model and UI. This mapping allows propagating UI changes to the process model and vice versa. Overall, our approach enables process designers to rapidly develop and update complex UI components in PAISs.

Process time patterns: A formal foundation

Companies are demanding more flexibility from their Process Aware Information Systems (PAIS). However, regulations and standards that impose limits to process executions are becoming increasingly important for business process management. The need for a compliance agenda and the security requisites for PAIS are pushing companies to search and to acquire new systems and technics for control and audit business processes. The aim is to avoid process execution that violates some business rules. In order to build an approach that support companies in auditing and controlling their business processes, there is a need for a formal and systematic modeling of business rules. In the present paper we have two objectives. The first one is to propose a set of business rules related to the ordering of tasks and to the involvement of a role or agent in cases. The second one is to build a supervisory control of PAIS that ensures compliance of business rules. To evaluate the correctness of our approach we applied it in two different business processes.KeywordsProcess-Aware Information Systembusiness rulessupervisory controlcompliancesecurity

Process-aware information systems are used to execute business processes to reach the operational goals of an organization. In this context, access control policies are defined to govern the choice in behavior of such systems. In a role engineering process these access control policies can be defined and customized. This paper introduces a new automated approach to derive current state access control policies from event logs extracted from process-aware information systems. For this purpose, the two standard formats for event logs called MXML and XES are used. It is demonstrated how this derivation can ease certain steps in the scenario-driven role engineering process, that are otherwise time-consuming and can get tedious if conducted manually.

In the paper, an integrated approach for the modeling and enforcement of delegation policies in process-aware information systems is presented. In particular, a delegation extension for process-related role-based access control (RBAC) models is specified. The extension is generic in the sense that it can be used to extend process-aware information systems or process modeling languages with support for process-related RBAC delegation models. Moreover, the detection of delegation-related conflicts is discussed and a set of pre-defined resolution strategies for each potential conflict is provided. Thereby, the design-time and runtime consistency of corresponding RBAC delegation models can be ensured. Based on a formal metamodel, UML2 modeling support for the delegation of roles, tasks, and duties is provided. A corresponding case study evaluates the practical applicability of the approach with real-world business processes. Moreover, the approach is implemented as an extension to the BusinessActivity library and runtime engine.

Introducing process-aware information systems (PAIS) in enterprises is usually associated with high costs. It is therefore crucial to understand those factors that determine these costs. Though software cost estimation has received considerable attention during the last decades, it is difficult to apply existing approaches to PAIS. This difficulty particularly stems from the inability of these techniques to deal with the dynamic interactions of the many technological, organizational and project-driven cost factors which specifically arise in the context of PAIS. Picking up this problem, this paper presents an approach to investigate the complex cost structures of PAIS engineering projects based on evaluation models. We present a formalism to design such evaluation models, discuss one characteristic evaluation model and its derivation in detail (based on the outcome of an empirical study), and introduce the notion of value-based evaluation patterns to enable the reuse of evaluation models.KeywordsBusiness ProcessAuxiliary VariableEvaluation FactorImpact RateEnterprise ArchitectureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Nowadays, Process-aware Information Systems (PAISs) are widely used in many business scenarios, e.g., by government agencies, by insurance companies, and by banks. Despite this widespread usage, the typical application of such systems is predominantly in the context of business scenarios. Nevertheless, emergency management can also benefit from the use of PAISs; for instance, the metaphor of a business process fits very good with the concept of emergency recovery plan. This paper summarizes an invited talk given by the first author for the EMSOA'10 workshop that has been co-located with the ServiceWave 2010 Conference. This paper starts the basic PAIS' requirements for the domain of emergency management, then it gives an overview of the nowadays' literature on using PAISs for Emergency Management. Finally, the paper proposes an architecture and a system to support the execution of emergency management processes.

Recently, process-aware information systems (PAIS) were introduced, which allow for dynamic process and service changes. This, in turn, has led to a large number of process model variants, which are difficult to maintain and expensive to configure. This paper deals with goals and issues related to the mining of process model variants. Our overall goal is to learn from process changes and to "merge" the resulting model variants into a generic process model in the best possible way. By adopting this generic process model in the PAIS, future cost of process change and need for process adaptations will decrease.

Nowadays, process-aware information systems (PAISs) are widely used for the management of “administrative” processes characterized by clear and well-defined structures. Besides those scenarios, PAISs can be used also in mobile and pervasive scenarios, where process participants can be only equipped with smart devices, such as PDAs. This paper illustrates ROME4EU, a fully-fledged PAIS that can be entirely developed on Windows Mobile PDAs. To our knowledge, all existing PAISs are equipped with an engine meant to run only on laptop/desktop. And this prevents them from being used in mobile scenarios, such as emergency management. ROME4EU is based on a mobile Web service middleware and a WS-BPEL orchestrator engine. The feasibility for mobile settings introduces new challenging issues to face with, such as reduced computational power, small screen size, battery consumption, automatic adaptability to anomalous events. The paper details also an evaluation of the ROME4EU's performances and illustrates its use by civil protection operators to manage the aftermath of a (simulated) emergency.

Organizations that manage their Business Processes (BPs) poorly -or that not manage them at all- have well-known problems regarding their operation, both at the BPs and the Information Systems (IS) levels. Some of these problems are due to a vertical and functional vision of the organization, without any global BP vision. In this context, similar decentralized organizational units very often perform the same BPs sometimes in different ways. Moreover, some BPs are implicit in the IS supporting them. In this article we present an experience report of a BPM pilot project we have carried out within our university, as an initiative to improve BPs management and corresponding IS support. We started specifying a process map for management support BPs, and then we selected key BPs which where specified, modeled and implemented using BPMN 2.0 and Bonita BPMS, to shift the organization focus from traditional IS to Process Aware IS (PAIS).

The goal of the ProGility workshop is to bring together practitioners and researchers from different communities such as BPM, software engineering, service-oriented computing, artificial intelligence, and CSCW/groupware who share an interest in flexibility of cooperative process-aware information systems and team support in both an intra and inter-organizational setting. This report of the fourth edition of the workshop gives an overview of the presented papers, which address various flexibility issues of process aware information systems.

The increasing availability of digital data offers new opportunities for analyzing business processes. Process aware information systems like Enterprise Resource Planning systems store data in the course of transaction processing. This data can be exploited by using process mining techniques. Process mining algorithms produce process models by analyzing recorded event logs. A fundamental challenge in process mining is the creation of purpose-oriented and useful process models. Process mining algorithms commonly refer to the temporal ordering of events for determining the control flow in reconstructed process models. We show how the logical sequence of events can be used instead of the temporal for reconstructing the control flow in mined process models. The exploitation of the logical structure of available event log records opens up new ways to receive purpose-oriented, less complex, and more informative process models.