Tomas Skersys

An Approach for Extracting Business Vocabularies from Business Process Models

Being a part of business process management (BPM) life cycle, business process modeling has found its place in information systems development (ISD) practices as well. At the same time, concepts of business vocabularies and rules are also the hot topics among BPM and ISD practitioners and academics. Nevertheless, in ISD, the integration of business process models with business vocabularies and rules is still not standardized and remains quite empiric. In this paper, basic aspects of the approach for business vocabularies’ extraction from business process models are presented. The approach is based on novel business level OMG standards “Business Process Model and Notation” (BPMN) and “Semantics for Business Vocabularies and Business Rules” (SBVR), thus contributing to OMG’s vision about Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) and to model-driven development in general. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.itc.42.2.2310

Framework for Knowledge-Based IS Engineering

The approach for Enterprise modelling extended by the management point of view is presented. The enterprise processes, management functions, and their interactions are considered as the critical components of the domain knowledge accumulated for the IS engineering purposes. The resulting framework for knowledge-based IS engineering - Enterprise meta-model (EMM) is developed and presented in this paper. The architecture of the advanced CASE system is also discussed.

Extending BPMN Business Process Model with SBVR Business Vocabulary and Rules

Despite the fact that business process (BP) modeling has its long-lasting traditions in various areas of application, this discipline remains in the constant process of improvement and issue-solving. The possibilities of synergy among business process models and business vocabularies & rules are analyzed in this paper. The authors emphasize the existing gap between business process modeling and specification of business vocabularies & rules. Such situation may lead to misunderstandings while reading and interpreting business models and also miscommunication issues within among the organizations. Some of these issues could be resolved by realizing the integration of BP modeling standards with business vocabularies & rules. The paper presents some argumentation to back such statements. Later, basic principles of the approach for BPMN Business process model integration with SBVR business vocabulary & rules are presented and briefly described in this paper. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.itc.41.4.2013

Class Model Development Using Business Rules

New developments in the area of computer-aided system engineering (CASE) greatly improve processes of the information systems development life cycle (ISDLC). Much effort is put into the quality improvement issues, but IS development projects still suffer from the poor quality of models during the system analysis and design cycles. At some degree, quality of models that are developed using CASE tools can be assured using various. automated. model comparison, syntax. checking procedures. It. is also reasonable to check these models against the business domain knowledge, but the domain knowledge stored in the repository of CASE tool (enterprise model) is insufficient (Gudas et al. 2004). Involvement of business domain experts into these processes is complicated because non- IT people often find it difficult to understand models that were developed by IT professionals using some specific modeling language.

The enhancement of class model development using business rules

Paper deals with the principles of model-driven UML Class model enhancement using business rules (BR) as a source of domain knowledge. Business rules are stored in BR repository which is defined by the business rules meta-model. Templates for business rules formalization are presented. Co-relations between BR meta-model and extended UML Class meta-model are also presented and discussed in this paper. Basic steps of the algorithm for the extended UML Class model enhancement are presented and illustrated with example.

Implementing semantically rich business vocabularies in CASE tools

The demand for support of business vocabularies in model-driven development of information systems becomes more and more evident. Yet this is being left out of focus by the majority of CASE tools vendors. Today, there are very few CASE tools, which offer certain functionality to manage business vocabularies and use them as an integral part of the whole system development project; none of the analyzed tools use any widely accepted standard for describing such vocabularies. In this paper, basic aspects of the implementation technology of semantically rich business vocabularies in CASE tool environment are presented. The solution is based on a novel OMG standard Semantics for Business Vocabularies and Business Rules (SBVR) and is implemented by making use of the extension mechanism of Unified Modeling Language (UML) and reusable functional components of the selected CASE tool MagicDraw.

Approach for Semi-automatic Extraction of Business Vocabularies and Rules from Use Case Diagrams

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities to extract well-structured business vocabularies and rules from the formalized requirements specifications expressed via use case diagrams; Object Management Group’s (OMG) standards, namely Semantics of Business Vocabularies and Business Rules (SBVR) and Unified Modeling Language (UML), are used for this purpose. The paper concentrates on a semi-automatic extraction approach by proposing UML2SBVR mapping matrix, extraction algorithm and implementation prototype. An experiment and the evaluation of its results are discussed to prove the usability of the presented approach.

Model-Driven Approach and Implementation of Partial Model-to-Model Transformations in a CASE Tool

One of the main features of Model Driven Architecture is a model-to-model (M2M) transformations, which improve the overall model-driven systems development process by speeding up the development process itself and also enabling the reusability of the existing models within a single or even multiple projects. However, CASE tool-supported M2M transformations quite often lack so needed flexibility and customization options. The main goal of this paper is to present a practical model-driven approach to improve the usability of partial model-to-model transformations in a CASE tool environment. The approach is currently implemented in the CASE tool MagicDraw; however, it can be adopted by any other CASE tool that meets certain capability requirements.

Model-driven development of partial model-to-model transformations in a CASE tool

Model-to-model (M2M) transformation is at the core of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and model-driven systems engineering in general. Nevertheless, the support of M2M transformations in CASE tools remains quite poor, and the existing solutions lack so needed transparency, flexibility and customization options. The main goal of this paper is to present an approach and implementation of model-driven development of user-interacted partial M2M transformations in a CASE tool.

The Need for Business Vocabularies in BPM or ISD Related Activities: Survey Based Study

Inclusion of business vocabularies (BVs), also referred to as glossaries, into information systems development (ISD) activities is a growing trend, yet this process is often lacking objective feedback and consolidated opinion from the industry and experts. In an effort to fill this gap, the two-stage research study with people working in the fields of information systems development or business process management (BPM) has been carried out. In this paper, key results of the questionnaire-based exploratory survey have been presented. Results make it relatively safe to presume that the BPM/ISD community generally supports the developments in the field of business vocabulary integration and standardization. On the other hand, results reveal that existing standards like SBVR are not widely known, and the BVs themselves are rarely considered a necessary element of the project. These findings could serve as a solid proof that research in this area, as well as development of working solutions, especially CASE tool integrations, should be intensified.