Pwpj Paul Grefen

Constructing customized process views

To enable effective cross-organizational collaborations, process providers have to offer external views on their internal processes to their partners. A process view hides details of an internal process that are secret to or irrelevant for the partners. This paper describes a formal two-step approach for constructing customized process views on structured process models. First, a non-customized process view is constructed from an internal structured process model by aggregating internal activities the provider wishes to hide. Second, a customized process view is constructed by hiding and omitting activities from the non-customized view that are not requested by the process consumer. The feasibility of the approach is shown by means of a case study.

Dynamic business network process management in instant virtual enterprises

Nowadays, business supply chains for the production of complex products or services are likely to involve a number of autonomous organizations. The competitive market requires that these supply chains are highly agile, effective and efficient. Agility and effectiveness are obtained by forming highly dynamic virtual enterprises within supplier networks. We call these instant virtual enterprises (IVEs). The required efficiency of creating and operating IVEs can only be obtained by automated support for design, setup and enactment of business processes within these IVEs. This process support involves the dynamic composition of local processes of network members into global processes at the IVE level. This functionality goes significantly beyond traditional approaches for interorganizational workflow management. The approach, architecture and technology required for this dynamic network process management in IVEs are outlined in this paper. We show how the developed approach is applied in the automotive industry in the context of the CrossWork IST project.

PRISMA/DB: a parallel, main memory relational DBMS

PRISMA/DB, a full-fledged parallel, main memory relational database management system (DBMS) is described. PRISMA/DBs high performance is obtained by the use of parallelism for query processing and main memory storage of the entire database. A flexible architecture for experimenting with functionality and performance is obtained using a modular implementation of the system in an object-oriented programming language. The design and implementation of PRISMA/DB are described in detail. A performance evaluation of the system shows that the system is comparable to other state-of-the-art database machines. The prototype implementation of the system runs on a 100-node parallel multiprocessor. >

Integrity control in relational database systems: an overview

This paper gives an overview of research regarding integrity control or integrity constraint handling in relational database management systems. The topic of constraint handling is discussed from two points of view. First, constraint handling is discussed by identifying a number of important research issues, and by treating each issue in detail. Second, a number of projects is described that have resulted in the realization of database management systems supporting integrity constraints; the various projects are compared with respect to a number of system characteristics. Together, both approaches give a broad overview of the state of the art in the field at this moment.

A framework for analysis and design of software reference architectures

Context: A software reference architecture is a generic architecture for a class of systems that is used as a foundation for the design of concrete architectures from this class. The generic nature of reference architectures leads to a less defined architecture design and application contexts, which makes the architecture goal definition and architecture design non-trivial steps, rooted in uncertainty. Objective: The paper presents a structured and comprehensive study on the congruence between context, goals, and design of software reference architectures. It proposes a tool for the design of congruent reference architectures and for the analysis of the level of congruence of existing reference architectures. Method: We define a framework for congruent reference architectures. The framework is based on state of the art results from literature and practice. We validate our framework and its quality as analytical tool by applying it for the analysis of 24 reference architectures. The conclusions from our analysis are compared to the opinions of experts on these reference architectures documented in literature and dedicated communication. Results: Our framework consists of a multi-dimensional classification space and of five types of reference architectures that are formed by combining specific values from the multi-dimensional classification space. Reference architectures that can be classified in one of these types have better chances to become a success. The validation of our framework confirms its quality as a tool for the analysis of the congruence of software reference architectures. Conclusion: This paper facilitates software architects and scientists in the inception, design, and application of congruent software reference architectures. The application of the tool improves the chance for success of a reference architecture.

Contracts for Cross-Organizational Workflow Management

Nowadays, many organizations form dynamic partnerships to deal effectively with market requirements. As companies use automated workflow management systems (WFMSs) to control their processes, a way of linking workflow processes in different organizations is required for turning the cooperating companies into a seamless operating virtual enterprise. The CrossFlow Esprit project aims at developing information technology for advanced workflow support in dynamic virtual organizations with contract based service trading. Contracts are necessary for flexible service outsourcing. This paper presents contracts as the basis for finding suitable partners, connecting WFMSs of different kinds, controlling outsourced workflow, and sharing an abstraction of the workflow specification between partners. CrossFlow contracts define the data, process, and conditions relevant to the cooperation and the outsourced workflow process on an abstract level. This information can be fed through an interface to the WFMSs of partners in a virtual enterprise to automate the co-operation between the partners completely.

WIDE-a distributed architecture for workflow management

This paper presents the distributed architecture of the WIDE workflow management system. We show how distribution and scalability are obtained by the use of a distributed object model, a client/server architecture, and a distributed workflow server architecture. Specific attention is paid to the extended transaction support and active rule support subarchitectures.

Aligning application architecture to the business context

Alignment of application architecture to business architecture is a central problem in the design, acquisition and implementation of information systems in current large-scale information-processing organizations. Current research in architecture alignment is either too strategic or too software implementation-oriented to be of use to the practicing information systems architect. This paper presents a framework to analyze the alignment problem and operationalizes this as an approach to application architecture design given a business context. We summarize guidelines for application architecture design and illustrate our approach and guidelines with an example.

Business process model repositories - Framework and survey

Context: Large organizations often run hundreds or even thousands of different business processes. Managing such large collections of business process models is a challenging task. Software can assist in performing that task, by supporting common management functions such as storage, search and version management of models. It can also provide advanced functions that are specific for managing collections of process models, such as managing the consistency of public and private processes. Software that supports the management of large collections of business process models is called: business process model repository software. Objective: This paper contributes to the development of business process model repositories, by analyzing the state of the art. Method: To perform the analysis a literature survey and a comparison of existing (business process model) repository technology is performed. Result: The results of the state of the art analysis are twofold. First, a framework for business process model repositories is presented, which consists of a management model and a reference architecture. The management model lists the functionality that can be provided and the reference architecture presents the components that provide that functionality. Second, an analysis is presented of the extent to which existing business process model repositories implement the functionality from the framework. Conclusion: The results presented in the paper are valuable as a comprehensive overview of business process model repository functionality. In addition they form a basis for a future research agenda. We conclude that existing repositories focus on traditional functionality rather than exploiting the full potential of information management tools, thus we show that there is a strong basis for further research.

Dynamic Business Process Formation for Instant Virtual Enterprises

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