Dynamics of process models in PML

The IPSE 2.5 project is concerned with the problem of how computer systems can be used in the development of information systems.The project is being carried out under the UK Alvey Programme Software Engineering Strategy by a consortium comprising STC Technology Limited, International Computers Limited, University of Manchester, Dowty Defense and Air Systems Limited, SERC Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, Plessey Research Roke Manor Ltd. and British Gas plc. Praxis Systems has worked as a subcontractor to STC and ICL. It finishes at the end of 1989.The project is concerned to provide facilities in support of people and organisations engaged in all aspects of computer systems development. Of course this is a vast field and thus the project has focussed on “process modelling” and “formal methods”. The former is concerned with coordination of the many processes undertaken in computer systems development. Formal methods are mathematically based approaches to software development.This synopsis (a summary of [1]) of the project emphasises “process modelling”. More details on the Formal Reasoning work of the project can be found in [2].Process Modelling is the act of participating in processes. Each and every member of an IPSE 2.5 community is a process modeller, a programmer, a secretary, the chief programmer, a project manger, a salesperson, the personnel manager, the accountant, etc. Furthermore, the devices of an office environment, printers, fax machines, photocopiers, etc., each perform roles in the office environment, and thus each of these is a process modeller. This view has the important property that a Process Modelling Language must be 'reflective' so that anything which has a purpose and place in a process model can be introduced in terms of the objects which are already supported in the language.Modelling actions include: creating abstract processors — roles; defining role behaviours — Role Classes; defining inter and intra-role behaviours; instigating inter-role interactions; selecting agenda actions; performing selected actions.The IPSE 2.5 project supports process modelling through the use of a Process Control Engine (PCE). A PCE can be loaded with knowledge (a process model) of the roles (activities) to be carried out by the staff and tools of the organisation using the PCE and thereafter the PCE can control the progress of the organisation's processes; coordinating, aiding, enforcing, and triggering the desired actions between the organisations processing resources — they thus cooperate in a meaningful fashion and work at a balanced rate.The Process Modelling Language (PML) is used to interact with the PCE and hence to 'load' process model fragments. PML development is based on work reported in [3]. A process model provides an appropriate context for each of the resources of a project to undertake the work ascribed to them and hence to enable development of a system.A further objective of the project has been the integration of Managerial and Technical procedures to enable controlled development of software systems using extant and new methodologies. The project focussed on the basic goal satisfaction (or planning) cycle of analyse the goal, create plan of action, resource and activate, monitor and revise actions. An important aspect of this approach is that revision constitutes 'Process Model Evolution' — a new behaviour!The project has spent some time on the challenging problem and implications of dynamic bindings and scoping of process model changes. In studying these problems the project developed models of a Mini-company with three management levels of Board, Business Centre, Project. Business Centres sell software services and as a result start projects. The projects employ their own chosen technical methods, but report as directed from the business centre, which in turn reports to the board. Much of the reporting is automated, and ensures timely and accurate reports of progress, accounting details, and specific items included on per project or business centre basis. Staff may also be supplied semi-automatically through prompting for resourcing as and when the need arises.IPSE 2.5 work has also used the above mentioned technology in the development of prototype IPSEs to support Formal (OBJ/Malpas) and Informal (SSADM like methods) development methods.The project is now progressing on the evaluation of both Formal Reasoning IPSE (MURAL), and the Demonstrator PCE. These evaluations will be reported as part of the project deliverables to Alvey.

For the success of developing software, Software development process model plays a crucial role in order to complete the task of developing software and to get high quality software. Since the advent of the first model (waterfall model), many software development process models have been brought out, but the software development process model is still evolving. The rules of evolution of software development process model have been researched from different perspective. The research has shown that: (1)For the evolution of software development process model, there are the driving forces from the objective world and subjective world. (2)Four models are the basis of evolution of the software development process model. They are waterfall model, rapid prototyping model, incremental model, component-based model. (3)Currently there are five trends in the view of evolution of software development process model. These trends of evolution are from the linear model to nonlinear model, from non-formal model to formal model, from the non-reuse model to reuse model, from single process model to integrated process model and from universal model to non-universal model. (4)In the future, there are four directions of evolution in the software development process model. These directions are to weaken complexity, to enhance pertinence, to enhance reliability and to enhance flexibility.

Software evolution process model (EPM) is created in terms of a formal evolution process meta-model (EPMM) and semi-formal approach to modeling based on EPMM [1]. In order to better manage and control the software evolution process and make the best of existing software technology, the method to transform any EPM to its execution model based logic programming has been proposed. Completeness of conversion depends on completeness of the rules, that is, all the expressions of the original model are found the correspondence in the target model. Since transformation rules are proposed based on precondition or post-condition types of activities in anyone EPM, this need to prove that activity type set in anyone EPM is completeness set. To this end, the precondition and post-condition of activities in EPM are classified based on analyzing all expressions in EPMs and the semantics of the activity execution. Type completeness set of activity’s precondition and its post-condition is presented. Lastly we prove that the activity type set in anyone EPM is completeness set by mathematical induction.

Owing to the complex formation mechanism of hydrodynamic landslides and the involvement of multiple influencing factors, the accuracy of the current prediction model of hydrodynamic landslide evolution process is unsatisfactory. This limitation prevents adequate monitoring and early warning on possible landslides in an area. To improve the accuracy of prediction model of hydrodynamic landslide evolution process supported by monitoring big data, the variational mode decomposition (VMD) and support vector regression (SVR) based on deep learning were integrated in the present study. Typical hydrodynamic landslide in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area (TGRA) in China is used as a case study for landslide displacement prediction. First, the VMD was utilized to decompose the cumulative displacement into the trend, periodic, and random terms. Then, external factors were decomposed into subsequences, and those characterized by periodicity and randomness were selected as input datasets. The associated displacement terms were then predicted using the Random Search–Support Vector Regression model. Finally, the total displacement was obtained by superimposing the three predicted components, and this was used to evaluate the performance of the model. The results show that the model improves the performance and accuracy of predicting the displacement associated with a hydrodynamic landslide, and the relative error is ≤2%.

Using domain-specific modeling languages to capture business processes can greatly enhance quality and efficiency of process modeling, because language and models are more expressive, concise and easy to understand. The development of domain-specific languages (DSLs) with accompanying tools and transformations is, however, a complex, time-consuming, and costly task. An efficient and simple approach to creating process modeling languages (PMLs) for specific business domains by reusing common parts is needed, where each resulting language is still optimally adjusted to its domain. For each of these languages, the abstract and concrete syntax have to be defined as well as transformations to more general languages. This paper presents DSLs4BPM, a generic framework for PMLs, which employs DSL modularization concepts to allow the derivation of domain-specific PMLs. The framework provides elements common to process modeling and a basic transformation to the generic Business Process Model and Notation 2.0. DSLs are created by adding own types to the framework language and own rules to the transformation at predefined extension points. The approach has been implemented based on the Eclipse Modeling Framework.

Software evolution process model (EPM) is created in terms of a formal evolution process meta-model (EPMM) and semi-formal approach to modeling based on EPMM. EPM is still abstract at higher abstract level and is general while software process is concrete, so EPM must be instantiated before its enactment. The method to transform any EPM to its execution model based on logic programming is proposed. Since activity contains the imports resource, roles resource, exports resource and tasks, the rules to transform the four parts of activity level of any EPM to its execution model based logic programming are respectively proposed by analyzing the execution semantics of the activities and the tasks in EPM. The converter program is realized and the correct results have presented to prove the correctness of the method.

Modeling languages for business processes and business rules: A representational analysis

During the last years, reference process modeling becomes an efficient approach for reuse in business process modeling (BPM). Many BPM tools provide mechanisms to adapt reference process models in order to meet new needs. However, this adaptation results in a set of variants which have to be managed. One of the most proposed solutions is the configurable process model. Therefore, evolving this configurable process model in terms of activities, a data flows and resources changes becomes a crucial issue. In this paper, we propose a process pattern which guides designers for managing evolution of configurable reference process models.

Data quality is critical to organizational success. In order to improve and sustain data quality in the long term, process-driven data quality management (PDDQM) seeks to redesign processes that create or modify data. Consequently, process modeling is mandatory for PDDQM. Current research examines process modeling languages with respect to representational capabilities. However, there is a gap, since process modeling languages for PDDQM are not considered. We address this research gap by providing a synthesis of the varying applications of process modeling languages for PDDQM. We conducted a keyword-based literature review in conferences as well as 74 highranked information systems and computer science journals, reviewing 1,555 articles from 1995 onwards. For practitioners, it is possible to integrate the quality perspective within broadly applied process models. For further research, we derive representational requirements for PDDQM that should be integrated within existing process modeling languages. However, there is a need for further representational analysis to examine the adequacy of upcoming process modeling languages. New or enhanced process modeling languages may substitute for PDDQM-specific process modeling languages and facilitate development of a broadly applicable and accepted process modeling language for PDDQM.

Business processes evolve over time due to changes in their legal, technical, or business context, or as a result of organizational learning. As a consequence, prespecified process models and their technical implementation in a PAIS need to be adapted accordingly. Moreover, prespecified process models often have to be changed to cope with design errors, technical problems, or poor model quality. This chapter presents techniques to tackle these challenges and to change implemented business processes at a technical level. First, it deals with process model evolution, i.e., the evolution of prespecified process models over time to accommodate changes of real-world processes. In this context, techniques are introduced for dealing with already running process instances and their on-the-fly migration to the changed process model, without violating any correctness and soundness properties. Second, this chapter introduces process model refactorings to foster internal process model quality and to ensure maintainability of the PAIS over time.

Process modeling is usually done using imperative modeling languages like BPMN or EPCs. In order to cope with the complexity of human-centric and flexible business processes several declarative process modeling languages (DPMLs) have been developed during the last years. DPMLs allow for the specification of constraints that restrict execution flows. They differ widely in terms of their level of expressiveness and tool support. Furthermore, research has shown that the understandability of declarative process models is rather low. Since there are applications for both classes of process modeling languages, there arises a need for an automatic translation of process models from one language into another. Our approach is based upon well-established methodologies in process management for process model simulation and process mining without requiring the specification of model transformation rules. In this paper, we present the technique in principle and evaluate it by transforming process models between two exemplary process modeling languages.

A multi-dimensional evolution modeling method for digital twin process model

Both the process modeling and process simulation are necessary components of process automation. A Process Modeling Language (PML) is a set of description tools that define processes attributes and constrains in a specific domain. Process modeling stakeholders may have different levels of dependencies on different types of PMLs. They also have various perspectives for modeling a process. Discrete and continuous PMLs are complimentary in modeling the process at different levels of abstraction and to address different stakeholders’ perspectives. The hybrid process simulation combines micro-level discrete process models with the macro-level continuous process models to capture process dynamics and deploy process optimization. This paper proposes an incremental approach based on the hybrid simulation in modeling a software process at different levels of abstraction in order to address different stakeholders’ perspectives. By addressing stakeholders’ concerns in hybrid simulation at each process segment, this approach incrementally integrates internal process dynamics and modifications due to external changes into process model that cannot be easily achieved by individually using discrete or continuous modeling approaches.

Este artículo está basado en la investigación titulada: “Sistema automatizado para el control de procesos en el área de recursos humanos en la Institución FundeMujer ubicada en el municipio de Estelí” cuyo propósito principal es implementar un sistema automatizado que permita realizar el control de asistencia, control de vacaciones y nómina de salario de los empleados, ya que este proceso actualmente se realiza de forma manual, lo que dificulta la entrega de información en el tiempo oportuno. Para la realización de este sistema se utilizó la metodología planteada por Roger Pressman, donde se propone el modelo de procesos evolutivos que se caracteriza por la manera en la que permite desarrollar versiones cada vez más completas del software y evolucionar poco a poco con el tiempo para su entrega final. El modelo de procesos evolutivos consta de cinco etapas: Comunicación, Plan rápido, Modelado, Diseño rápido, Construcción de prototipo, Desarrollo, entrega y retroalimentación. Se obtuvo como resultado un sistema funcional y completo, para ser utilizado en el área de recursos humanos de la institución Funde Mujer.

Often, different process models are employed in different phases of the BPM life cycle, each providing a different approach for capturing business processes. Efforts have been undertaken to overcome the disintegration of process models by providing complementary standards for design and execution. However, this claim has not yet been fulfilled. A prominent example is the seemingly complementary nature of BPMN and BPEL. The mapping between these process modeling languages is still unsolved and poses challenges to practitioners and academics. This chapter discusses the problem of translating between process modeling languages. We argue that there is conceptual mismatch between modeling languages stemming from various perspectives of the business-process management life cycle that must be identified for seamless integration. While we focus on the popular case of BPMN vs. BPEL, our approach is generic and can be utilized as a guiding framework for identifying conceptual mismatch between other process modeling languages.