Gabriel Hermosillo

Using Complex Event Processing for Dynamic Business Process Adaptation

As the amount of data generated by todays pervasive environments increases exponentially, there is a stronger need to decipher the important information that is hidden among it. By using complex event processing, we can obtain the information that really matters to our organization and use it to improve our processes. However, even when this information is retrieved, business processes remain static and cannot be changed dynamically to adapt to the actual scenario, diminishing the advantages that can be achieved. In this paper we present CEVICHE, a framework that combines the strengths of complex event processing and dynamic business process adaptation, which allows to respond to the needs of todays rapidly changing environments. We use a simple car rental scenario to show how CEVICHE could be used to maintain the quality of service of a business process by adapting it according to the situation.

Creating Context-Adaptive Business Processes

As the dynamicity of today’s business environments keeps increasing, there is a need to continuously adapt business processes to respond to the changes in those environments and keep a competitive level. By using complex event processing, we can discover information that is relevant to our organization, which is usually hidden among the data generated in the environment, and use it to adapt the processes accordingly to respond to the changing conditions in an optimal way. Unfortunately, the static nature of business process definitions makes it impossible to adapt them at runtime and the redeployment of a modified process is required. By using a component-based approach, we can transform the existing business processes into dynamically bound components, adding the flexibility needed to adapt the processes at runtime. In this paper we present CEVICHE, a framework that combines the strengths of complex event processing and dynamic business process adaptation, which allows to respond to the needs of the rapidly changing environment, and its adaptation language called SBPL, an extension to BPEL which adds flexibility to business processes.

RESTful integration of heterogeneous devices in pervasive environments

More and more home devices are equipped with advanced computational capabilities to improve the user satisfaction (e.g., programmable heating system, Internet TV). Although these devices exhibit communication capabilities, their integration into a larger home monitoring system remains a challenging task, partly due to the strong heterogeneity of technologies and protocols. In this paper, we therefore propose to reconsider the architecture of home monitoring systems by focusing on data and events that are produced and triggered by home devices. In particular, our middleware platform, named DigiHome, applies i) the REST (REpresentational State Transfer) architectural style to leverage on the integration of multi-scale systems-of-systems (from Wireless Sensor Networks to the Internet) and ii) a CEP (Complex Event Processing) engine to collect information from heterogeneous sources and detect application-specific situations. The benefits of the DigiHome platform are demonstrated on smart home scenarios covering home automation, emergency detection, and energy saving situations.

The DigiHome Service-Oriented Platform

Nowadays, the computational devices are everywhere. In malls, offices, streets, cars, and even homes, we can find devices providing and consuming functionality to improve the user satisfaction. These devices include sensors that provide information about the environment state (e.g., temperature, occupancy, light levels), service providers (e.g., Internet TVs, GPS), smartphones (that contain user preferences), and actuators that act on the environment (e.g., closing the blinds, activating the alarm, changing the temperature). Although these devices exhibit communication capabilities, their integration into a larger monitoring system remains a challenging task, partly because of the strong heterogeneity of technologies and protocols. Therefore, in this article, we focus on home environments and propose a middleware solution, called DigiHome, that applies the Service Component Architecture (SCA) component model to integrate data and events generated by heterogeneous devices in this kind of environments. DigiHome exploits the SCA extensibility to incorporate the REpresentational State Transfer (REST) architectural style and, in this way, leverages on the integration of multiscale systems‐of‐systems (from wireless sensor networks to the Internet). Additionally, the platform applies Complex Event Processing technology that detects application‐specific situations. We claim that the modularization of concerns fostered by DigiHome and materialized in a service‐oriented architecture, makes it easier to incorporate new services and devices in smart home environments. The benefits of the DigiHome platform are demonstrated on smart home scenarios covering home automation, emergency detection, and energy saving situations. Copyright

A Middleware Platform to Federate Complex Event Processing

Distributed systems like crisis management are subject to the dissemination of a huge volume of heterogeneous events, ranging from low level network data to high level crisis management intelligence, depending on the role of the rescue teams involved. In such systems, Complex Event Processing (CEP) has emerged as a solution to detect and react (in real-time) to complex events, which are correlations of more primitive events. Although various CEP engines implement the support for dealing with the business heterogeneity of events, the technological integration of these events remains uncovered. Therefore, in this paper we introduce DiCEPE (Distributed Complex Event Processing Engine), a platform which focuses on the integration of CEP engines in distributed systems. DiCEPE provides a native support for various communication protocols in order to federate CEP engines and ease the deployment of complex systems-of-systems. We illustrate our proposal using a nuclear crisis management scenario and show how DiCEPE leverages the coordination and the federation of different CEP engines.

Undoing Event-Driven Adaptation of Business Processes

As business processes continue to gain relevance in different domains, dynamicity is becoming a great concern. Static processes no longer cover the actual needs of constantly changing environments, and process adaptation is a must in order to maintain competitive levels. While creating dynamically adaptable business processes can be a challenging task, undoing these adaptations is a natural functionality that has not been studied in depth. Straight forward approaches for unadaptation can easily end up with corrupted processes, bringing uncertainty to the whole business logic. In this paper we bring forward a solution for efficiently undoing a business process adaptation in event-driven environments, considering also the correlated adaptations that happened afterwards.