Sascha Alpers

Microservice Based Tool Support for Business Process Modelling

The rise of micro services as architectural pattern creates a bunch of interesting opportunities for software architectures of modelling editors and additional services. Main advantages are the scalability in collaborative distributed scenarios and enhanced possibilities regarding service development and operation. Throughout this article, we will illustrate how modelling editors and additional services can be build based on micro services. Our tooling will focus on business process modelling. We will also strive to highlight how architectures of this kind can enact collaborative modelling techniques, increase reuse of utilized service components and improve their integration into lightweight user interfaces, for example in mobile devices.

Identifying Needs for a Holistic Modelling Approach to Privacy Aspects in Enterprise Software Systems.

Modelling is a common method for both Business Architecture Management and for Software Architecture Management. In general, there is a gap in the model continuity between business models and software models. Especially when modelling compliance driven requirements like privacy traceability is important for compliance checks and helps to build the models in an efficient way. In this paper, approaches for modelling privacy from business and software engineering perspective are examined. A key finding is that there is currently no comprehensive modelling approach covering the needed aspects and perspectives.

A Systematic Approach for Evaluation and Selection of ERP Systems

Companies utilize advanced information systems, like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, in order to manage their resources and improve their competitiveness. Evaluation, selection and implementation of suitable ERP systems, however, is a challenging task for many companies, especially small and medium sized enterprises (SME). A highly non-transparent ERP-market with a lot of different vendors and system versions, the variety of possible selection criteria as well as individual requirements of the company form a complex decision process. Particularly small and medium companies need support in this phase as it is a critical investment and an important success factor. In this article we will present a systematic approach for evaluation and selection of ERP systems. Our methodology offers decision support for acquisition of a new ERP system by consideration of individual requirements particularly including the company’s current processes and IT infrastructure. It is driven by a multi-step process, first conducting a pre-selection of ERP systems, subsequently narrowing down in a second negotiation phase so that finally a suitable ERP system is chosen.

Mobile Modeling Tool Based on the Horus Method

A mobile modeling tool is presented, based on the theoretically founded and practically proven Horus Method for business process management. Our tool is location- and platform-independent -- therefore it can be used at different locations and on various platforms, including desktop systems, tablets and smartphones. Furthermore, our tool supports easy management of modeling business processes, because the implemented interactive mechanisms are based on well-known, intuitive mechanisms of mobile devices. In order to support the increasing number of involved parties in business processes, our tool also promotes the collaboration of different stakeholders in modeling business processes.

Citizen Empowerment by a Technical Approach for Privacy Enforcement

It is a fundamental right of every natural person to control which personal information is collected, stored and processed by whom, for what purposes and how long. In fact, many (cloud based) services can only be used if the user allows them broad data collection and analysis. Often, users can only decide to either give their data or not to participate in communities. The refusal to provide personal data results in significant drawbacks for social interaction. That is why we believe that there is a need for tools to control ones own data in an easy and effective way as protection against economic interest of global companies and their cloud computing systems (as data collector from apps, mobiles and services). Especially, as nowadays everybody is permanently online using different services and devices, users are often lacking the means to effectively control the access to their private data. Therefore, we present an approach to manage and distribute privacy settings: PRIVACY-AVARE is intended to enable users to centrally determine their data protection preferences and to apply them on different devices. Thus, users gain control over their data when using cloud based services. In this paper, we present the main idea of PRIVACY-AVARE.