Model-driven user interface generation and adaptation in process-aware information systems

Abstract

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAISs) has resulted in a large number of implemented business processes. To react on changing needs, companies should be able to quickly adapt these process implementations if required. Current PAISs, however, only provide mechanisms to evolve the schema of a process model, but do not allow for the automated creation and adaptation of their user interfaces (UIs). The latter may have a complex logic and comprise, for example, conditional elements or database queries. Creating and evolving the UI components of a PAIS manually is a tedious and error-prone task. This technical report introduces a set of patterns for transforming fragments of a business process model, whose activities are performed by the same user role, to UI components of the PAIS. In particular, UI logic can be expressed using the same notation as for process modeling. Furthermore, a transformation method is introduced, which applies these patterns to automatically derive UI components from a process model by establishing a bidirectional mapping between process model and UI. This mapping allows propagating UI changes to the process model and vice versa. Overall, our approach enables process designers to rapidly develop and update complex UI components in PAISs.