Victoria Torres

VIVACE: A framework for the systematic evaluation of variability support in process-aware information systems

Context: The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAISs) such as workow management systems, enterprise resource planning systems, or case management systems, together with the high variability in business processes (e.g., sales processes may vary depending on the respective products and countries), has resulted in large industrial process model repositories. To cope with this business process variability, the proper management of process variants along the entire process lifecycle becomes crucial. Objective: The goal of this paper is to develop a fundamental understanding of business process variability. In particular, the paper will provide a framework for assessing and comparing process variability approaches and the support they provide for the dierent phases of the business process life

Building business process driven web applications

The Internet has turned to be one the most common platform for the development of applications. In addition, sometimes the specification of these applications is given to web developers in the form of Business Processes (BP), and from this specification they are asked to develop the corresponding Web Application. In this situation, Web Engineering Methods should provide a way in which these specifications could be taken and be transformed into a Web Application that gives support to the process execution. Furthermore, when we are talking about B2B applications, we have to take into account that these BP usually involve the use of distributed functionality where different partners collaborate to accomplish an agreed goal. Therefore, in this work we provide a method for the automatic generation of Web Applications that give support to BP specifications. For this purpose, we generate from a BP definition the Navigation (web pages) and the WS-BPEL executable description that implements the entire process.

Towards Run-Time Flexibility for Process Families: Open Issues and Research Challenges

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems and the high variability of business processes in practice have resulted in process model repositories with large collections of related process variants (i.e., process families). Existing approaches for variability management focus on the modeling and configuration of process variants. However, case studies have shown that run-time configuration and re-configuration as well as the evolution of process variants are essential as well. Effectively handling process variants in these lifecycle phases requires deferring certain configuration decisions to the run-time, dynamically re-configuring process variants in response to contextual changes, adapting process variants to emerging needs, and evolving process families over time. In this paper, we characterize these flexibility needs for process families, discuss fundamental challenges to be tackled, and provide an overview of existing proposals made in this context.

A Qualitative Comparison of Approaches Supporting Business Process Variability

The increasing adoption of Process-Aware Information Systems, together with the reuse of process knowledge, has led to the emergence of process model repositories with large process families, i.e., collections of related process model variants. For managing such related model collections two types of approaches exist. While behavioral approaches take supersets of variants and derive a process variant by hiding and blocking process elements, structural approaches take a base process model as input and derive a process variant by applying a set of change operations to it. However, at the current stage no framework for assessing these approaches exists and it is not yet clear which approach should be better used and under which circumstances. Therefore, to give first insights about this issue, this work compares both approaches in terms of understandability of the produced process model artifacts, which is fundamental for the management of process families and the reuse of their contained process fragments. In addition, the comparison can serve as theoretical basis for conducting experiments as well as for fostering the development of tools managing business process variability.

Enhancing Modeling and Change Support for Process Families through Change Patterns

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAISs), together with the variability of business processes (BPs), has resulted in large collections of related process model variants (i.e., process families). To effectively deal with process families, several proposals (e.g., C-EPC, Provop) exist that extend BP modeling languages with variability-specific constructs. While fostering reuse and reducing modeling efforts, respective constructs imply additional complexity and demand proper support for process designers when creating and modifying process families. Recently, generic and language independent adaptation patterns were successfully introduced for creating and evolving single BP models. However, they are not sufficient to cope with the specific needs for modeling and evolving process families. This paper suggests a complementary set of generic and language-independent change patterns specifically tailored to the needs of process families. When used in combination with existing adaptation patterns, change patterns for process families will enable the modeling and evolution of process families at a high-level of abstraction. Further, they will serve as reference for implementing tools or comparing proposals managing process families.

Change Patterns in Use: A Critical Evaluation

Process model quality has been an area of considerable research efforts. In this context, the correctness-by-construction principle of change patterns provides promising perspectives. However, using change patterns for model creation imposes a more structured way of modeling. While the process of process modeling (PPM) based on change primitives has been investigated, little is known about this process based on change patterns. To obtain a better understanding of the PPM when using change patterns, the arising challenges, and the subjective perceptions of process designers, we conduct an exploratory study. The results indicate that process designers face little problems as long as control-flow is simple, but have considerable problems with the usage of change patterns when complex, nested models have to be created. Finally, we outline how effective tool support for change patterns should be realized.

Applying CVL to business process variability management

Business Processes (BP) exist in many variants depending on the application context. The use of variability mechanisms in BPs becomes essential for organizations to reduce development and maintenance efforts. However, such mechanisms entail big challenges. At design time, poor model specifications can turn process variants into difficult-to-maintain and understand artifacts. At runtime, process variants require continuous adaptations to achieve business goals in highly dynamic execution contexts. In order to address these challenges, in this paper we present a proposal to manage process variants at design time and runtime. At design time, process variants are modeled by combining a BP modeling language with the Common Variability Language. Then, at runtime, based on the created models and on the current context, process variants are adapted by means of MoRE-BP, a reconfiguration engine that is capable of performing dynamic adaptations automatically. An online-shop scenario illustrates our proposal and a proof-of-concept prototype validates its feasibility.

A methodological framework and software infrastructure for the construction of software production methods

The theory of Method Engineering becomes increasingly solid, but very few engineering tools have been developed to support the application of its research results. To overcome this limitation, this paper presents a methodological framework based on Model Driven Engineering techniques. The framework provides a method supported by a software platform for the construction of software production methods. This framework covers from the specification of the software production method to the generation of the CASE tool that supports it. This generation process has been semi-automated through model transformations. The CASE tool and the software platform are based on the Eclipse-based MOSKitt tool. The plugin-based architecture and the integrated modelling tools included in the MOSKitt tool turn it into a suitable software platform to support our proposal. To validate the proposal we have applied the framework to a case study.

Developing BP-driven web applications through the use of MDE techniques

Model driven engineering (MDE) is a suitable approach for performing the construction of software systems (in particular in the Web application domain). There are different types of Web applications depending on their purpose (i.e., document-centric, interactive, transactional, workflow/business process-based, collaborative, etc). This work focusses on business process-based Web applications in order to be able to understand business processes in a broad sense, from the lightweight business processes already addressed by existing proposals to long-running asynchronous processes. This work presents a MDE method for the construction of systems of this type. The method has been designed in two steps following the MDE principles. In the first step, the system is represented by means of models in a technology-independent manner. These models capture the different aspects of Web-based systems (these aspects refer to behaviour, structure, navigation, and presentation issues). In the second step, the model transformations (both model- to-model and model-to-text) are applied in order to obtain the final system in terms of a specific technology. In addition, a set of Eclipse-based tools has been developed to provide automation in the application of the proposed method in order to validate the proposal.

Turning Method Engineering Support into Reality

The Situational Method Engineering (SME) discipline emerged two decades ago to face up to the challenge of the in-house definition of software production methods and the construction of the corresponding supporting tools. However, nowadays most of the existent proposals only focus on one of the phases of the SME lifecycle. In order to fill this gap, in this paper we present a methodological framework that equally encompasses two of these phases, which refer to the method design and implementation. In order to support them in an effective manner, we advocate for the use of the Model Driven Development (MDD) paradigm. Applying these ideas, the framework has been defined on top of a MDD infrastructure based on meta-modeling and model transformation techniques. In addition, we provide implementation details of the framework in an Eclipse-based modeling platform, namely MOSKitt.