Marek Kowalkiewicz

Linking Business Goals to Process Models in Semantic Business Process Modeling

Broad knowledge is required when a business process is modeled by a business analyst. We argue that existing Business Process Management methodologies do not consider business goals at the appropriate level. In this paper we present an approach to integrate business goals and business process models. We design a Business Goal Ontology for modeling business goals. Furthermore, we devise a modeling pattern for linking the goals to process models and show how the ontology can be used in query answering. In this way, we integrate the intentional perspective into our business process ontology framework, enriching the process description and enabling new types of business process analysis.

Semantic annotation and composition of business processes with Maestro

One of the main problems when creating execution-level process models is finding implementations for process activities. Carrying out this activity manually can be time consuming, since it involves searching in large service repositories. We present Maestro for BPMN, a tool that allows to annotate and automatically compose activities within business processes. We explain the main assumptions and algorithms underlying the tool, and we overview what will be demonstrated at ESWC.

Weak Dependencies in Business Process Models

Business process management systems (BPMS) have proven to be effective in high-volume, repetitive production processes. However, the rigid structure of process models used in BPMS hinders their use in less repetitive processes performed by information workers, where a high degree of flexibility is required. In this paper, an extension to the traditional process models is presented, where ad hoc, runtime changes to process instances are enabled. The extension, weak dependencies, is motivated by business cases presented in the paper. Additionally, formal description of weak dependencies as well as a proof-of-concept prototype are presented.

Organizational ontologies to support semantic business process management

The Semantic Business Process Management (SBPM) aims at automation of the Business Process Management life cycle with use of semantics and Semantic Web services technology. The key issue to fulfil this aim is to provide an adequate machine-processable representation of processes. In this article we present one of the most important elements of process description, namely organizational ontologies. Moreover, we discuss their role in the early phases of SBPM and illustrate it with a set of application scenarios.

Procedure and guidelines for evaluation of BPM methodologies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology that may be used to perform evaluation of business process management (BPM) methodologies. As this area lacks proper formalized approaches, the aim of the publication is to promote the new approach, proposed by the authors.Design/methodology/approach – The authors analyse related methodologies and theoretical background. Based on that, they suggest an evaluation approach, which is used to verify correctness of a semantic BPM (SBPM) methodology.Findings – The proposed evaluation methodology has been practically tested. Additional interviews have been conducted and interviewees stress high value of the approach. The presented evaluation methodology was validated on the example of the SBPM methodology used in a European integrated project.Research limitations/implications – The results of this paper can be used to guide development and verify correctness of new BPM methodologies.Practical implications – The paper demonstrates how validation of B...

Towards more personalized web: extraction and integration of dynamic content from the web

Information and content integration are believed to be a possible solution to the problem of information overload in the Internet. The article is an overview of a simple solution for integration of information and content on the Web. Previous approaches to content extraction and integration are discussed, followed by introduction of a novel technology to deal with the problems, based on XML processing. The article includes lessons learned from solving issues of changing webpage layout, incompatibility with HTML standards and multiplicity of the results returned. The method adopting relative XPath queries over DOM tree proves to be more robust than previous approaches to Web information integration. Furthermore, the prototype implementation demonstrates the simplicity that enables non-professional users to easily adopt this approach in their day-to-day information management routines.

Robust web content extraction

We present an empirical evaluation and comparison of two content extraction methods in HTML: absolute XPath expressions and relative XPath expressions. We argue that the relative XPath expressions, although not widely used, should be used in preference to absolute XPath expressions in extracting content from human-created Web documents. Evaluation of robustness covers four thousand queries executed on several hundred webpages. We show that in referencing parts of real world dynamic HTML documents, relative XPath expressions are on average significantly more robust than absolute XPath ones.

Process View Derivation and Composition in a Dynamic Collaboration Environment

Recently, process view concept emerged out in business process management area. A process view may present only partial contents of a business process to a user, and thereby enables the visibility adjustment of business processes. In aspects of privacy protection and authority control, process views are of practical use for process modelling and execution. Given the complex relations between process users, it is a highly sought-after feature to depict the diversity and variation of the perception of different users towards business processes with process views. This paper presents a role-based process view model, which incorporates the role hierarchy into the process view model. This model enables the view derivation and composition between different users. Therefore, a process view is allowed to be derived from another view or composed from multiple views. A series of rules are defined to guarantee the structural consistency and validity of process views during transformations. A set of algorithms are developed to formalise the procedures of view filtering and merging. An application scenario is used to illustrate the feasibility of the approach.

Architecture for Service Profiling

Service oriented architecture is gaining momentum. However, in order to be successful, the proper and up-to-date description of services is required. Such a description may be provided by service profiling mechanisms, such as one presented in this article. Service profile can be defined as an up-to-date description of a subset of non-functional properties of a service. It allows for service comparison on the basis of non-functional parameters, and choosing the service which is most suited to the needs of a user. In this article the notion of a service profile along with service profiling mechanism is presented as well as the architecture of a profiling system

Towards adaptive management of QoS-aware service compositions

Service compositions enable users to realize their complex needs as a single request. Despite intensive research, especially in the area of business processes, web services and grids, an open and valid question is still how to manage service compositions in order to satisfy both functional and non-functional requirements as well as adapt to dynamic changes. In this paper we describe an approach towards adaptive management of QoS-aware service compositions. This approach integrates well known concepts and techniques and proposes various execution strategies based on dynamic selection and negotiation of services, contracting based on service level agreements, service enactment with flexible support for exception handling, monitoring of service level objectives, and profiling of execution data.