Mohamed Boukhebouze

Network-based social coordination of business processes

Abstract This paper presents a social coordination approach that addresses the issue of conflicts over resources during business process execution. A business process consists of tasks that persons and/or machines execute. The resources, that business processes require at run-time, are sometimes limited and/or not-renewable. The approach uses a set of social relations that connect tasks/persons/machines together. These relations are the basis of developing specialized networks that capture the interactions during business process execution and are used to recommend corrective actions when conflicts over resources occur. These actions are dependent on the properties of tasks, persons and machines properties which referred to as transactional, activity, and operational, respectively. A system that demonstrates the approach is also discussed.

SUPER: Social-Based Business Process Management Framework

In this demo paper, we present SUPER standing for Social-based bUsiness Process managEment fRamework that leverages social computing principles for the design and development of social business processes (aka business processes 2.0). SUPER identifies task, person, and machine as the core components of a business process. Afterwards, SUPER establishes a set of execution and social relations to illustrate how tasks (also persons and machines) are connected together. The social relations help build configuration network of tasks, social network of persons, and support network of machines that capture the ongoing interactions during business process execution.

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.

Yet another BPEL extension for user interactions

In this paper, we propose a BPEL extension that deals with the user interactions expression in a Web service composition. This extension defines new data interaction activities to allow user providing, selecting or getting data. Moreover, the extension proposes a new type of interaction events that allow processing of the user interaction. The user interaction specification helps to generate a user interface for the Web service composition which is made by transforming the described user interactions to user interface components.

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.

Enterprise 2.0: Research Challenges and Opportunities

Blending Web 2.0 technologies with enterprise information systems is setting up the stage for a new generation of information systems that will help enterprises open up new communication channels with their stakeholders. Contrary to traditional enterprises with top-down command flow and bottom-up feedback flow, the same flows in Enterprise 2.0 cross all levels and in all directions bringing people together in the development of creative and innovative ideas. The power of Web 2.0 technologies stems from their ability to capture real-world phenomena such as collaboration, competition, and partnership that can be converted into useful and structured information sources from which enterprises can draw information about markets’ trends, consumers’ habits, suppliers’ strategies, etc. This paper discusses the research efforts that our international research group has put into the topic of Enterprise 2.0 (aka Social Enterprise). In particular, our research group advocates that existing practices for managing enterprise information systems need to be re-visited in a way that permits to capture social relations that arise inside and outside the enterprise, to establish guidelines and techniques to assist IT practitioners integrate social relations into their design, development, and maintenance efforts of these information systems, and last but not least to identify and tackle challenges that prevent capturing social relations.

Benchmarking XML-Schema Matching Algorithms for Improving Automated Tuning

Several matching algorithms were recently developed in order to automate or semi-automate the process of correspondences discovery between XML schemas. These algorithms use a wide range of approaches and matching techniques covering linguistic similarity, structural similarity, constraints, etc. The final matching combines arithmetically different results stemmed from these techniques. The aggregation of the results uses often many parameters and weights to be adjusted manually. Generally, this task is achieved by human experts and requires a perfect understanding of the matching algorithm. In order to reduce the human intervention and improve matching quality, we suggest automating the tuning of the various structural parameters used within XML-Schema matching algorithms. In this work, we offer a benchmark, for three tools, that seeks mathematical relations between parameters values and schema topology. In consequent, we propose an algorithm for the tuning of these parameters for studied tools.

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).

UsiWSC: Framework for Supporting an Interactive Web Service Composition

In this paper, we propose the UsiWSC framework for designing, deploying and executing Web service compositions with user interactions. The UsiWSC design relies on an extension of the BPEL standard: UI-BPEL. The extension supports the derivation of user interfaces as well as executable compositions for different user contexts. The UsiWSC execution requires the coordination of the control and data flows between web services and user interfaces.