Adeel Ahmad

Using model checking to control the structural errors in BPMN models

The emergence of BPMN as a standard notation to express the business processes is based on its simplicity of notations and its exhaustive expressiveness. Nevertheless the lack of formal semantics in the BPMN can cause syntactic and structural errors. The former requires less effort to be checked, while the later usually requires attention to prove some properties, like deadlock-freedom and livelock-freedom. In this paper, we address the issue of detecting the structural errors with an approach based on model checking. It verifies the soundness of business process model and helps the business modelers to avoid the deadlocks, livelocks, and multiple terminations errors.

Software evolution control towards a better identification of change impact propagation

The software evolution is often a continuous process necessary to avoid a short longevity of software use. The evolution control requires analysis to be processed respectively before and after software change implementation. First, an a priori change impact analysis is required to help decisions takers by estimation of intended impact and its propagation to other software components. Secondly, an a posteriori change analysis is destined to estimate to what extent the goals of implemented changes have been effectively reached. Both invoked analysis of change impact require an exhaustive description of individual software components as well as their various types of interdependency. In our paper, we propose an exhaustive stratified description of software components using formal modeling, aiming at providing better change impact analysis. The proposed description focuses on software elements which may play role in change impact and the propagation of its effects from directly modified component to other components of the whole software.

Analyzing the ripple effects of change in business process models

Change management is a critical task to control the side effects of a modification during the business process evolution. The evolution of business processes is an essential activity for the companies to better fulfill the requirements of their customers and different stakeholders. In this respect, the enterprises should adopt an effective mechanism in order to achieve the flexible business process models. It is important to identify and highlight the ripple effects of a change for minimizing their impact on other parts or entities of the system and associated services. This paper proposes a dependency-centric approach for change impact analysis. We attempt to demonstrate the change impact propagation in business process models by detecting and analyzing the interdependencies among all parts of business processes along with associated services. It can support the maintenance and evolution of business process models. The major objective is to help the modelers and business experts to assess the associated risk of intended changes and estimate the effort required for their accomplishments.

Towards a better control of change impact propagation

The software evolution requires an exhaustive understanding of all the artifacts or components composing the software. In fact, any intended change may generate an impact propagated to the various software components through the different kind of relationships relating them. This situation is generally called the ripple effect and may cause several types of damages or side effects. In this paper, we focus on the potential flow of change impact propagation as provoked by the carried out change. For that purpose, we propose a structural model of software evolution (SMSE). This model is intended to represent and manage the different software artifacts and their relationships. The instantiated SMSE is used to built a knowledge base system providing, among other facilities, an assistance to the designer (or engineer) of software evolution for an a priori assessment of the change impact. The major aim of the system is to help a systematic analysis of the change impact and the identification of its propagation.

Texture analysis of lace images using histogram and local binary patterns under rotation variation

The images of lace textile are particularly difficult to be analyzed in digital form using classical image processing techniques. The major reasons of this difficulty emerge from the complex nature of lace which generally has different textures in its constituents like the background and patterns. In this paper, we study the behavior of Image Histogram (HistI) and Local Binary Patterns (LBP) on image extracts of lace in presence and absence of rotation. We further evaluate two variants of LBP; primarily the LBP Histogram (LBPB) and secondly the Fourier Transform applied on the LBP Histogram (LBPFFT). Consequently, we analyze the contribution of data fusion on feature level and score level in the different experimentations. The classification rate evaluates the discrimination degree of each descriptor via the k nearest neighbors kNN classifier. Experimental results indicate that the LBPB, LBPFFT and HistI combined at score level generate the better performance in absence of transformations. Whereas, LBPFFT and HistI combined at the same level generate the better classification rate, in the presence of rotation.

The Change Impact Analysis in BPM Based Software Applications: A Graph Rewriting and Ontology Based Approach

The Business Process Models describe and formalize the operations, constraints and policies of an organization. These models have firstly been used as abstract views of all the processes implied in an organisation. These served as inputs and outputs of the business analysis and re-engineering activities with no explicit relationship with the IT infrastructures which have been implementing business processes. In this paper, we deal with the BPM as higher abstraction level artefacts of software applications implementing the organisation processes. It presents our approach dealing with the change management of such applications. The approach is based on the graph based formalisation of all the software artefacts including the BPM ones. It provides an explicit management of various relationships conducting the change impact. The change operations are then formalized by graph rewriting (or transformation) rules. These rules implement both the change and the change impact propagation. The semantic knowledge concerning the various artefacts and the change operations is represented by an ontology. This ontology is intended to be able to automatically generate some change management rules. We use graph rewriting system (AGG) as a mean to formally specify and validate the result of our approach. The resulting specifications are then implemented using an integrated software change management platform appearing as a set of the Eclipse Workbench plug-ins.

Ontology-Based Change Impact Assessment in Dynamic Business Processes

The business process models are often subjected to change rapidly in order to cope with the market demands. It may be useful for companies to adapt a monitoring mechanism to achieve flexible business process models. It is also desirable to control the ripple effects of a change on whole or part of the business process and its running instances. It requires an exhaustive understanding of concerned changes and their application levels. In this article, we propose a methodology based on dependency analysis for an a priori change impact analysis in the business process models. The approach is based on the ontology definitions to describe the dependency relationships. The major objective is to obtain a knowledge base to help the designers and business experts to estimate the associated risk of intended changes and the effort required for their implementation.

Detecting structural errors in BPMN process models

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) has emerged as a standard notation to express the business process models. A lack of formal semantics in the BPMN can cause the syntactic and structural errors. The former requires less effort to be checked, while the later usually needs a complex state-space analysis to prove some properties, like the deadlock-freedom and the livelock-freedom. In this paper, we present an approach based on model checking for the automated verification of business process models. We illustrate the deadlocks, livelocks, and multiple termination problems, which can help the business modelers to avoid structural errors.

Towards a Better Change Impact Analysis in Architecture Description Languages

This chapter proposes a multi-modeling approach destined to better control the software evolution. The presented approach follows formal models on software architecture and source code level. It formalizes the elements of software architecture, their interdependent relationships and their source codes to analyze the impact propagation of an intended change. The constituents of these models are evaluated with a reasoning based expert system. The expert system is validated as a platform based on eclipse plug-ins to analyze the architecture description languages. The software architecture and source codes are parsed to generate the facts of the distributed knowledge-based system, which executes change propagation rules to evaluate the impact of a change performed on distributed components.

Ontology based reasoning for solving passenger train optimization problem

The Logistic processes generally lead to complex physical flows dealing with various logistic elements. It has been widely observed that the quality of uncontrolled processes decline with the evolving complexity. It may make them incoherent and quasi obsoletes. Thus, the continuous optimization of logistic processes is essential for the consistent continuity of logistic activities, and henceforth, it supports their desired growth. In this paper, we propose a reasoning system that uses the conceptual domain of logistics and their optimization. The proposed approach is mainly based on the definition of logistic terminologies using ontology. We intend, that a logistic expert may use defined terms to specify a problem. These can be matched to extract the involved logistic processes. It may assist a logistics expert to identify and/or precisely specify the logistic problem. Furthermore, it may identify the logistic processes, that can be executed, to resolve the problem and consequently to resolve the inherent optimization problems. We have been experimenting the different solutions of the Passenger Transportation Problem and eventually built a software framework (based on the composition of web services), to semi-automatically assist the resolution procedure of identified optimization problems.