Boris Shishkov

Design of software applications using generic business components

One frequent cause of software project failure is the mismatch between the (business) requirements and the actual functionality of the delivered (software) application. An approach is proposed in this paper, for design of software, basing consistently this design on prior business process modeling. The alignment between these two tasks is realized in a component-based way, by deriving the software model from identified (generic) business components, thus - taking advantage of the benefits of object-orientation. The paper introduces not only the concepts of the approach but also elaborated views on how it could be implemented using particular software design and business process modeling techniques. A way to implement the approach is through UML

Towards Flexible Inter-enterprise Collaboration: A Supply Chain Perspective

the standard language for designing software. The suggested approach is expected to be a useful contribution to the knowledge on aligning business process modeling and software design.

Deriving Use Cases from Business Processes

Since neither uniformity nor pluriformity provide the answer to easing inter-enterprise collaborations, we address (inspired by relevant strengths of service-oriented architectures) the problem of supporting such collaborations from an infrastructure perspective. We propose architectural guidelines for interactively establishing a suitable inter-enterprise collaboration scheme, before the exchange of actual content takes place. The proposed guidelines stem from an analysis of some currently popular approaches concerning the achievement of inter-enterprise collaborations with ICT means. Taking into account the strong relevance of these issues to the Supply chain domain, we put our work in the Supply chain perspective. We also illustrate our architectural guidelines with an example from this domain. It is expected that the research contribution, reported in this paper, will be useful as an additional result concerning the (ICT-driven) inter-enterprise collaboration.

Modeling of e-Business Brokerage Systems Using UML and Petri Net

The mismatch between the business requirements and the actual functionality of the delivered software application is considered to be a crucial problem in current software development. Solving this problem means to find out how to consistently place the software specification model on a previously developed business process model. If considering in particular the UML-based software design, we need to answer in this regard a fundamental question, namely — how to find all relevant use cases, based on sound business process modeling? Adopting the business process modeling as a basis for identification of use cases has been studied from three perspectives — Language/Action Perspective, Organizational Semiotics and Petri Net. The goal of the current paper is to study and analyze the strengths of DEMO concerning the derivation of use cases. This could be helpful not only for the investigation of DEMO but also for the further activities directed towards finding out the most appropriate way(s) of identifying use cases from business processes.

Identifying Business Process Patterns Using Semantic Analysis

The modeling of software applications that realize brokerage functionality is of particular importance for e-business. UML appears to be a suitable tool for conducting such a modeling. The UML is widely accepted now as a standard modeling environment for modern application software development. It is popular among researchers and well proven in practice. UML offers also an appropriate “interface” between requirements engineering and software design, namely the concept of Use case. However, it is still a question how to properly derive use cases in such a way that the software design model stems from a model of the processes to be supported by the software. The idea that is proposed and elaborated is to derive Use cases from a Petri net business process model. Petri net is chosen because of its ability to completely capture a system (including its dynamics) and because a Petri net model is straightforwardly mappable into a Use case model. A development process is suggested about the combination of UML and Petri net, in realizing design (which stems from business process modeling) of e-business brokerage system. The development process is illustrated using a case example.

Telematic applications for supporting telework related activities

A problem in the business process modelling task is how to grasp correctly and completely the input information about the studied business reality; information which is often unstructured, informal, and vague. We study the usefulness of applying Semantic Analysis for the purpose of “translating” the input information into a structured output. This study is in the context of the development of an approach, namely SDBC, which aligns business process modelling and software specification—in a component-based way.

DERIVING USE CASES FROM BUSINESS PROCESSES The advantages of DEMO

This paper introduces a further study towards telematic systems, especially in relation to their importance for telework. With respect to this issue, the paper considers the role of telematic applications in support of telework. In particular, it investigates telework support brokerage systems, which turn out to be crucial for the spread of telework among broad social circles. As a possible infrastructure for such systems, the paper considers telecenters. It is shown how such a brokerage system could be practically implemented, providing ideas about the system architecture. Finally, attention is paid also to some social issues, discussing the great importance of modern information and communication technologies (including telework as one of the best examples of successful mass application of these technologies with great benefits for society) for the human prosperity of tomorrow.