Aïcha-Nabila Benharkat

MurO: a multi-representation ontology as a foundation of enterprise information systems

When we deal with different information systems in an enterprise, we unfortunately deal with problems of integrating and developing systems and databases in heterogeneous, distributed environments. In the last decade, the ontologies are used in order to make understandable the data, and to be a support for systems interoperability problems. As shared common vocabulary, the ontologies play a key role in resolving partially the semantic conflicts among systems. Since, different applications of the same domain have several representations of the same real world entities; our aim is to propose MurO: a Multi-representation ontology. The latter is an ontology characterizing the concepts by a variable set of properties (static and dynamic) or attributes in several contexts and in several scales of granularity. We introduce, in this paper, the multi-representation requirements for ontologies. We develop, as well, a formalism based on Modal Description Logics for coding MurO ontologies. Then, we show its use with the ongoing EISCO (Enterprise Information System Contextual ontology) project and its relevance for answering the motivating requirements.

MADONA: a method for automated provisioning of cloud-based component-oriented business applications

Service-oriented computing and cloud computing offer many opportunities for developing and deploying applications. In this paper, we propose and describe a component-oriented method for automated provisioning of cloud business applications. The method covers the whole application’s lifecycle and is based on cloud orchestration tools that manage the deployment and dependencies of supplied components. We aim to reduce the necessary technical knowledge for provisioning component-oriented cloud applications. To this end, we extend Linked Unified Service Description Language to describe services for matching user’s requirements. We adopt a real case study to show the feasibility of the method.

Towards Self-healing Execution of Business Processes Based on Rules

In this paper we discuss the need to offer a self-healing execution of a business process within the BP-FAMA framework (Business Process Framework for Agility of Modelling and Analysis) presented in [1]. This will be done by identifying errors in the process specification and reacting to possible performance failures in order to drive the process execution towards a stable situation. To achieve our objective, we propose to model the high-level process by using a new declarative language based on business rules called BbBPDL (Rules based Business Process Description Language). In this language, a business rule has an Event-Condition-Action-Post condition-Post event-Compensation (ECA2PC) format. This allows translating a process into a cause/effect graph that is analyzed for the sake of ensuring the reliably of the business processes.

Bringing Socialized Semantics into Web Services Based on User-centric Collaborative Tagging and Usage Experience

The semantics of Web services is often provided by suppliers and embedded physically inside the service descriptions expressed in WSDL. This type of annotation can be very costly and is generally performed by well-trained cognitive or knowledge engineers. In this research work, we aim at providing an alternative to the actual Semantic Web Service (SWS) technologies by bringing a community-based or social semantics into Web services. This semantics is created by users through collaborative tagging on the capabilities of Web services after testing or using them. We argue that this type of semantic annotation can be very pragmatic and facilitate the process of Web service discovery, composition or clustering assisted by users.

A Rule-Based Modeling for the Description of Flexible and Self-healing Business Processes

In this paper we discuss the importance of ensuring that business processes are label robust and agile at the same time robust and agile. To this end, we consider reviewing the way business processes are managed. For instance we consider offering a flexible way to model processes so that changes in regulations are handled through some self-healing mechanisms. These changes may raise exceptions at run-time if not properly reflected on these processes. To this end we propose a new rule based model that adopts the ECA rules and is built upon formal tools. The business logic of a process can be summarized with a set of rules that implement an organizations policies. Each business rule is formalized using our ECAPE formalism (Event-Condition-Action-Post condition- post Event). This formalism allows translating a process into a graph of rules that is analyzed in terms of reliably and flexibility.

Holistic and Change-centric Model for Web Service Evolution

Under the constantly evolving requirements from the consumers and competition pressure from the peers, Web Service providers are always striving to improve their services through publishing new versions. As more enterprises choose to embrace SOA, the frequent updates of Web services and increasing distributed environments have resulted in major challenges for all stakeholders to address the evolution of the Web service As a result, lots of solutions have been proposed to deal with the issues caused by Web Service evolution such as models, monitor, analysis, versioning, adaptation, and execution. However, few of them concentrate on the solution that covers all the evolution-related issue under one holistic model which explains 1) what has been changed, 2) when the changes occur, 3) how to apply changes, and 4) how to react to the changes. In this article, we present a change-centric model for Web Service evolution and explain how it deals with the evolution-related issues.

Change-centric Model for Web Service Evolution

Web service is subject to frequent changes during its lifecycle. Web service evolution is a widely discussed topic. Many related problems have also been generated from Web service evolution such as Web service adaptation, Web service versioning and Web service change management. To treat with these issues efficiently, a complete evolution model for Web service should be built. In this paper, we introduce our change-centric model for Web service evolution and how we use it to design, execute, and adapt to the changes during Web service evolution.

Sharing semantics among enterprise information systems with contextual ontologies: theory and practice

The Enterprise Information System (EIS) manages enterprise business, applies strategic and economic decisions, and holds communication with partners. Shared semantics are necessary to leverage system engineering benefits such as reusability and interoperability. In the last decade, research on ontologies and contexts was driven separately as formal support for treating the semantics sharing problem. In this paper, we show how to pair-up contexts and ontologies as a formal background for reaching a suitable global enterprise environment. To promote contextual ontologies, we present how to exploit technically the proposed formalism through an architecture and a prototype called Enterprise Information System Contextual Ontologies.

Towards an End-to-End IoT Data Privacy-Preserving Framework Using Blockchain Technology

Internet of Things-based environments collect and generate huge amounts of data about users, their activities, and their surroundings, which can disclose some sensitive information and threaten their privacy. Hence, the user’s collected and handled data by IoT-based applications need to be exploited and secured in an appropriate way to protect personal data and user’s privacy. Therefore, we aim at improving the data ownership, transparency, and auditability for users. To this end, we propose an end-to-end privacy-preserving framework for the IoT data using blockchain technology. The smart contract use in our framework will hence enforce the privacy requirement compliance according to the user’s (i.e., data owner) privacy preferences and end-user’s (i.e., data consumer) requests. To do so, we detail the design of the system architecture by introducing its core components and functionalities and highlight through an example of how it operates in a real-world use-case.

Towards an Approach for Estimating Impact of Changes on Business Processes

A business process needs to be constantly reviewedto accommodate new business requirements and regulations.To this end, it is important to manage the impact of this reviewon a process by determining which parts are affected and morecritically estimating the overall cost of this review. In thispaper we present an approach to manage the changes in aprocess. We model a process as a set of business rules that arestructured using the ECAPE formalism standing for Event,Condition, Action, Post–condition, and post-Event Thisformalism allows translating a process into a graph of rulesthat is used for two types of analysis: business processes agilityand cost of changes. This cost is based on our Rule ChangeCost Model (R2CM).