Jay W. Benayon

A Framework for Verifying SLA Compliance in Composed Services

Service level agreements (SLAs) impose many non-functional requirements on services. Business analysts specify and check these requirements in business process models using tools such as IBM WebSphere Business Modeler. System integrators on the other hand use service composition tools such as IBM WebSphere Integration Developer to create service composition models, which specify the integration of services. However, system integrators rarely verify SLA compliance in their proposed composition designs. Instead, SLA compliance is verified after the composed services are deployed in the field. To improve the quality of the composed services, we propose a framework to verify SLA compliance in composed services at design time. The framework re-uses information in business process models to simulate services and verify the non-functional requirements before the service deployment. To demonstrate our framework, we built a prototype using an industrial process simulation engine from IBM WebSphere Business Modeler and integrate it into an industrial service composition tool. Through a case study, we demonstrate that our framework and the prototype assist system integrators in composing services while considering the non-functional requirements.

Business process adaptation on a tracked simulation model

Business processes need to adapt to changes in the operating conditions and to meet the service-level agreements (SLAs) with a minimum of resources. Changes in operating conditions include hardware and software failures, load variation and variations in user interaction with the system. An integral component to adaptation is the awareness over the behavior of self and environment (or having an estimation of the current situation). Aiming at estimation, this paper investigates the automatic building of a dynamic predictive model of the business process that is used for business process optimization. The model is a simulation model whose parameters are tuned at run time by tracking the system with a particle filter.

Business Process Transformation Wizard: a Bridge between Business Analysts and Business Process Transformation Technology

In spite of many advances in business process modeling and simulation technologies, their adoption by the business analyst community has been primarily limited to specialists. We propose a business process transformation wizard as a tool to bridge this gap. This enables users to easily analyze their performance using quantitative technologies by using a business process transformation patterns library to explore different transformation options and by showing the minimum and most commonly required information that can drive transformation initiatives.

Business process transformation patterns & the business process transformation wizard

In spite of many advances in business process simulation technologies, their adoption by the business analyst community has been primarily limited to specialists. We propose a business process transformation wizard as a capability to bridge this gap. This enables analysts to explore different business process transformation options using business process transformation patterns and analyze their performance using quantitative technologies. In this paper, we explain the approach encapsulated in the BPT wizard and illustrate it with an example