Business Process Execution Language Research Articles

An advancing method for web service reliability and scalability using ResNet convolution neural network optimized with Zebra Optimization Algorithm

AbstractWeb service reliability and scalability is an important mission that keeps web services running normally. Within web service, the web services invoked by users not only depend on the service itself, but also on web load condition. Due to the features of web dynamics, traditional reliability and scalability methods have become inappropriate; at the same time, the web condition parameter sparsity problem will cause inaccurate reliability prediction. To address these challenges, Web Service Reliability and Scalability Determination Using ResNet Convolutional Neural Network optimized with Zero Optimization Algorithm (WRS‐ResNetCNN‐ZOA) is proposed in this manuscript. Initially, the input data is collected from WSRec dataset. The ResNet convolutional neural network (ResNetCNN) with Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) specification is introduced to forecast the reliability and scalability of web service. The results are categorized as right and wrong based on ResNetCNN. The weight parameters of the ResNetCNN is optimized by Zebra Optimization Algorithm to improve accuracy of the prediction. The performance of the proposed method is examined under some performance metrics, like F‐measure, reliability, scalability, accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and precision. The proposed technique attains 15.36%, 35.39%, 23.87%, 20.67% better reliability, 42.39%, 11.39%, 34.16%, 25.78% better accuracy when analyzed to the existing methods, like Web Reliability based on K‐clustering, (WRS‐KClustering), Web Reliability prediction based on AdaBoostM1 and J48 (WRS‐AdaM1‐J48), Web Reliability prediction based on Online service Reliability (WRS‐OPUN), and Web Reliability prediction based on Dynamic Bayesian Network (WRS‐DBNS), respectively.

Web service reliability and scalability determination using optimized depth wise separable convolutional neural network

AbstractWeb service composition (WSC), a distributed architecture, creates new services atop existing ones. Ensuring trust and assessing performance and dependability in online services coordination is essential. In this paper, “Web Service Reliability and Scalability Determination Using Depth Wise Separable Convolutional Neural Network” (WSRS‐DWSCNN) is proposed to assess the trustworthiness of online service compositions, particularly focusing on performance and dependability. This work addresses the need to predict the reliability and scalability of Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) composite web services. The proposed approach transforms the BPEL specification into a Depth Wise Separable Convolutional Neural Network (DWSCNN) and annotates it with probabilistic properties for prediction. The DWSCNN model classifies the outcomes as correct or incorrect, and to enhances the prediction of web service composition scalability and reliability, we optimize the DWSCNN's weight parameters using the Adolescent Identity Search Algorithm (AISA). The proposed technique is activated in Python and its efficacy is analyzed under some metrics, such as reliability, scalability, accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, precision, F‐measure. The proposed method provides 12.36%, 45.39%, and 25.97% better reliability, 41.39%, 11.39%, 34.16% better accuracy compared with existing methods like, Web service reliability prediction depending on machine learning (WSRS‐K‐means), reliability prediction method for multiple state cloud/edge‐basis network utilizing deep neural network (WSRS‐DNN‐BO), and improving reliability of mobile social cloud computing utilizing machine learning in content addressable network (WSRS‐CAN), respectively.

Collaboration Patterns and Topic Trends in Business Process Management Conferences

One of the most important scientific activities in which business process management (BPM) research attempts have been presented is the BPM Conferences that have been organized since 2003. These conferences guide the future of the field concerning different aspects of the subject. This study focuses on the accumulated literature that BPM conferences have constituted. In this regard, it aims to investigate the portfolio of BPM conferences to pinpoint the trends that have been followed over the years. A bibliometric dataset of the proceedings between 2005 and 2020 was extracted. The methods of scientometrics and bibliometrics are adopted to reveal the collaborations and clusters regarding citations, co-authorships, co-occurrences of keywords, and topic structures, the trends, and summary statistics. Clusters have emerged around certain authors and these authors are pioneering researchers who direct international studies on BPM and have created many research and development opportunities with their research laboratories. The situation in author relations is also reflected in the statistics of institutions and countries. With the keyword and abstract analyses at different depths and dimensions, inferences were made about the topics discussed at the BPM Conferences. Co-authorship analyses regarding authors and countries revealed the clusters around the authors and their countries such as Van der Aalst (Netherlands), Mendling (Austria), Weske (Germany), Dumas (Estonia), La Rossa (Australia), and Reijers (Netherlands). It has been observed that the keywords that have been recorded intensively in the last five years are concentrated around the topics of industry 4.0, big data, internet of things, blockchain, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. In general terms, it has been observed that especially the topics such as process mining, semantic structures of processes, business process execution language, and related projects have come to the fore. Findings emphasize that these topics have been affected by the business and technology dynamics of the relevant period.

BPEL process defects prediction using multi-objective evolutionary search

Web services are becoming increasingly popular technologies for modern organizations to improve their cooperation and collaboration through building new software systems by composing pre-built services. Such services are typically composed and executed through BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) processes. Like any other software artifact, such processes are frequently changed to add new or modify existing functionalities or adapt to environmental changes. However, poorly planned changes may introduce BPEL process design defects known as anti-patterns or defects. The presence of defects often leads to a regression in software quality. In this paper, we introduce an automated approach to predict the presence of defects in BPEL code using Multi-Objective Genetic Programming (MOGP). Our approach consists of learning from real-world instances of each service-based business process defect (i.e., anti-pattern) type to infer prediction rules based on the combinations of process metrics and their associated threshold values. We evaluate our approach based on a dataset of 178 real-world business processes that belong to various application domains, and a variety of BPEL process defect types such as data flow and portability defects. The statistical analysis of the achieved results shows the effectiveness of our approach in identifying defects compared with state-of-the-art techniques with a median accuracy of 91%.

A Context-Aware Architecture for Realizing Business Process Adaptation Strategies Using Fuzzy Planning

Business competency emerges in flexibility and reliability of services that an enterprise provides. To reach that, executing business processes on a context-aware business process management suite which is equipped with monitoring, modeling and adaptation mechanisms and smart enough to react properly using adaptation strategies at runtime, are a major requisite. In this paper, a context-aware architecture is described to bring adaptation to common business process execution software. The architecture comes with the how-to-apply methodology and is established based on process standards like business process modeling notation (BPMN), business process execution language (BPEL), etc. It follows MAPE-K adaptation cycle in which the knowledge, specifically contextual information and their related semantic rules — as the input of adaptation unit — is modeled in our innovative context ontology, which is also extensible for domain-specific purposes. Furthermore, to support separation of concerns, we took apart event-driven adaptation requirements from process instances; these requirements are triggered based on ontology reasoning. Also, the architecture supports fuzzy-based planning and extensible adaptation realization mechanisms to face new or changing situations adequately. We characterized our work in comparison with related studies based on five key adaptation metrics and also evaluated it using an online learning management system case study.

An Optimal Execution of Composite Service in Decentralized Environment

It is important for service-oriented architectures to consider about how the composition of web services affects business processes. For instance, a single web service may not have been adequate for most complex business operations, needing the use of multiple web services. This paper proposed a novel technique for optimal partitioning and execution of the services using a decentralized environment. The proposed technique is designed and developed using a genetic algorithm with multiple high task allocations on a single server. We compared three existing techniques, including meta-heuristic genetic algorithm, heuristics like Pooling-and-Greedy-Merge (PGM) technique, and Merge-by-Define-Use (MDU) technique, to a simulation of Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) partition using genetic algorithm through multiple high tasks allocation to single server node. The proposed technique is practical and advantageous. In terms of execution time, number of server requests, and throughput, the proposed technique outperformed the existing GA, PGM, and MDU techniques.

Verifiable Model Construction for Business Processes

Business process specified in Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), which integrates existing services to develop composite service for offering more complicated function, is error-prone. Verification and testing are necessary to ensure the correctness of business processes. SPIN, for which the input language is PROcess MEta-LAnguage (Promela), is one of the most popular tools for detecting software defects and can be used both in verification and testing. In this paper, an automatic approach is proposed to construct the verifiable model for BPEL-based business process with Promela language. Business process is translated to an intermediate two-level representation, in which eXtended Control Flow Graph (XCFG) describes the behavior of BPEL process in the first level and Web Service Description Models (WSDM) depict the interface information of composite service and partner services in the second level. With XCFG of BPEL process, XCFGs for partner services are generated to describe their behavior. Promela model is constructed by defining data types based on WSDM and defining channels, variables and processes based on XCFGs. The constructed Promela model is closed, containing not only the BPEL process but also its execution environment. Case study shows that the proposed approach is effective.

Принципы построения информационной системы для создания тематических сервисов на базе комплексного использования наземно-аэрокосмических данных и результатов моделирования

The paper describes an architecture and examples of information technologies and systems implementation for automating interdisciplinary projects accomplishment and creating thematic services that require utilizing Earth remote sensing data. It is proposed using approaches based on a service-oriented architecture, web services technologies, and technologies based on the Business Process Execution Language to organize the interaction of system components. Testing results show that the proposed approaches ensure achieving maximum automation of systems running, high reliability of the results, and user friendliness.

Secure Data Transmission in BPEL (Business Process Execution Language)

In the world of computation, the encryption is a technique by which the plaintext or any type of data which is converted from the readable form is transformed into an encoded form. That encoded form can only be read by another entity if they have corrected key for decryption. The proposed technique providing the security to the data in inefficient way that can be further use in implementation in new upcoming task and enhancement in current running projects of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) BPEL (Business Process Execution Language).

Validating Structural Metrics for BPEL Process Models

Business process models tend to get more and more complex with age, which hurts the ease with which designers can understand and modify them. Few metrics have been proposed to measure this complexity, and even fewer have been tested in the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) context. In this paper, we present three related experimental studies whose aim was to analyse the ability of four selected structural metrics to predict BPEL process model understandability and modifiability. We used Spearman’s rho and regression analysis in all three experiments. All metrics passed the correlation tests meaning that they can serve as understandability and modifiability indicators. Further, four of the metrics passed the regression test for understanding time implying that they can serve as understandability predictors. Finally, only one metric passed the regression test for modification time implying that it can serve as a modifiability predictor.

Detect and analyse the concurrent flaws of the BPEL process in a VPN-based approach

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is a standard specification in service composition area. However, it is still lack of effective verification mechanisms based on formal methods. This paper describes a new modelling method for BPEL process by using a novel Petri net named variable Petri net (VPN). Several analysis methods are proposed to verify the concurrent flaws and an automated transformation and analysis tool is developed. Furthermore, the case study conducts a comparison with previous studies and validates the efficiency of our work.

Toward a Formalization of BPEL 2.0 : An Algebra Approach

The WS-BPEL 2.0 (Web Service Business Process Execution Language) has been the dominant standard to describe Web Services (WS) orchestration approach. It is a rich and expressive language that provides interesting features, among them we find four mechanisms to deal with abnormal situations (Event, Fault, Compensation and Termination) handlers, EFCT- handlers. However, WS-BPEL is not rigorously defined as a formal language making EFCT- handlers complicated and ambiguous. This paper aims to remove ambiguities from EFCT-handlers by formalizing their semantics.

A New Business Process Verification Approach for E-Commerce Using Petri Nets

The design, modeling, optimization, reengineering, and coupling of business processes in e-commerce environment have gradually become a hot research topic. Business processes must be strictly described and validated by formal methods to ensure their reliability and efficiency. This paper systematically studies the introduction of new business process characteristics into behavioral temporal logic and extend TLA to obtain a new logic system PTLA, which enriches the theoretical system of formal method of business process under the environment of e-commerce. The paper also discusses Petri nets and show how to convert Petri nets into TLA. A parallel Petri net model was built to represent the dynamic, concurrency and flexibility, and cross-organizational e-commerce business process. Finally, the use of simulation to extend the business process execution language BPEL to TLA.

Automation of Web Services Composition Development Cycle

Since the emergence of Service Oriented Architecture and its implementation with the Web services technology, combining several Web services to response to a complex request presented a hard challenge. This is an area that has attracted the interest of many research organizations and manufactories. This paper firstly presents a summary of developed approach of Web services composition based on Model Driven Approach, and using different languages and systems, like Multi-Agent Reactive Decisional system for modeling task, Lotos language for formal verification, and Business Process Execution language for implementation. Secondly, the paper seeks to automate the generation of different processes (business process, executable process and formal process) by using the framework AWSCPM «Automatic Web Services Composition Processes based on MARDS», which is developed as part of this research work.

Research and Design of Lightweight Workflow Engine Based on SCA

In order to overcome the shortcomings of the traditional workflow engine structure and defects, this study proposes a loosely coupled lightweight workflow engine based on SCA (Service Component Architecture) and BPEL (Business Process Execution Language for Web Service, also known as WS-BPEL or BPEL4WS) engine. The support for traditional workflow engines for heterogeneous is improved by the separation between business logic and transport protocol, so that the engine is no longer limited to a specific transport protocol.

Test Case Selection for All-Uses Criterion-Based Regression Testing of Composite Service

Composite services evolve for various reasons. Test case selection in the regression testing is an effective technique to ensure the correctness of modified versions meanwhile to reduce the cost of testing. However, few work has studied the test case selection problem based on the data flow testing criteria. In addition, there are three observable kinds of changes during the evolution, including Process change, Binding change and Interface change, which all bring impact to the data flow. To address these issues, a test case selection approach is proposed for regression testing of BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) composite service where all-uses criterion is satisfied and all the three change types are involved. BPEL composite service is modeled with a two-level model in which XCFG (eXtended Control Flow Graph) describes the behavior of BPEL process in the first level and WSDM (Web Service Description Model) depicts the interface information of composite service and partner services in the second level. Change impact analysis is performed to identify the affected definition-use pairs by comparing and analyzing two-level models of the baseline and evolved versions. And testing paths are generated to cover the affected definition-use pairs and select test cases based on the path condition analysis. Empirical result shows that the proposed approach is effective.

Adaptive BPEL Service Compositions via Variability Management

Service-Oriented Architectures are a popular development paradigm to enable distributed applications constructed from independent web services. When coordinated, web services are an infrastructure to fulfill dynamic and vertical integration of business. They may face frequent changes of both requirements and execution environments. Static and predefined service compositions using business process execution language (BPEL) are not able to cater for such rapid and unpredictable context shifts. The authors propose a variability management-based adaptive and configurable service composition approach that treats changes as first-class citizens and consists of identifying, expressing, realizing, and managing changes of service compositions. The proposed approach is realized with a language called VxBPEL to support variability in service compositions and a platform for design, execution, analysis, and maintenance of VxBPEL-based service compositions. Four case studies validate the feasibility of the proposed approach while exhibiting good performance of the supporting platform.

UML activity diagram transformation into BPEL integration flow

The growing interest of companies in integration and interoperability between information systems has caused increase in significance of Service-Oriented Architecture which provides tools for Enterprise Application Integration. In that architecture, Enterprise Service Bus provides technical possibilities of communication between IT systems. A key element in the communication are integration flows. Objective: The aim of this article is to present a new transformation Integration2BPEL, which automates the development of executable integration flow expressed in the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) based on the model of the integration flow presented in the Unified Modelling Language (UML) activity diagram. Method: The author proposes a transformation of the type of model-to-code type which generates integration flow expressed in WS-BPEL, which can be executed in any BPEL-compliant process engine. The integration flow is modelled using UML activity diagram with stereotypes from ‘UML Profile for Integration Flows’ profile in an IBM Rational Software Architect (RSA). Using Integration2BPEL transformation a complete, executable integration flow is generated, which is composed of many mediation mechanisms. Generated integration flows have been executed on OpenESB. Results: The ability to generate a complete integration flow in BPEL, which without any additions can be run on enterprise service bus. Implementation phase of an integration flow construction was automated. Each of integration flows is implemented according to the same rules. In addition, it allows to avoid mistakes made by designers and programmers. Conclusions: Model-Driven Development is an approach that leads to the automation of the design and programming phases. Integration2BPEL transformation is a uniform mechanism to design integration flow. Potentially, it also allows to avoid implementation errors. Keywords: Web Services Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), Unified Modelling Language (UML), UML activity diagram, Model-Driven Development (MDD), Transformation. null

Automated Quantitative Verification for Service-Based System Design: A Visualization Transform Tool Perspective

Service-based systems are a new software mode for distributed business processes integration. It is difficult for traditional testing methods to verify the functional and nonfunctional requirements of software. To address this problem, this paper proposes a visual verification platform to quantitatively compute the reliability and cost for evaluating the performance of service-based systems in the design phase. First, an extended automata model namely Probabilistic Reward Labeled Transition System (PRLTS) is proposed to formalize both the functional behaviors and nonfunctional features. Then, the formal language of probabilistic model checker PRISM is introduced to show the grammar of the target verification codes that we want to transform. Second, XML description tags of Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is parsed to generate the functional behaviors using different kinds of transformation rules, based on which the probability matrix and reward concept are employed to denote the service’s reliability and cost, respectively. Third, the PRLTS model is turned into the input language of PRISM, where the graphic description language DOT of Graphviz is used as an intermediary to display system behaviors in a visual way. The model layout allows the designer to manually adjust the behaviors of the PRLTS model, where verification codes can be dynamically updated according to the changes in modified information. Fourth, to perform quantitative verification, the verification property in the form of the Probabilistic Computation Tree Logic (PCTL) formula can be automatically generated when the requirement model of the service-based system is inputted, during which the threshold value of qualitative property will be initially computed and returned as a recommended value. This allows the user to modify the qualitative property in an interactive way. Furthermore, experimental analysis of the real-world case study demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed method. Thus, our platform provides guidance for quantitative verification and graphical visualization for effectively generating formal models and checking the quantitative properties for service-based systems.

Empirical Evaluation of Design Level Metrics for Aspect Oriented Business Process Execution Language in SOA

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) facilitates seamless application integration through standards-based predefined web services. During integration, Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) plays a vital role in composing existing Web Services thereby achieving a service based workflow model. Due to frequently changing business requirements, it becomes very much essential for an SOA application to have the capability to dynamically bind with an alternate service rather than statically fixing the services in a given composition. However, BPEL lacks support for the run-time inclusion of a new Web Service or functionality. Aspects overcome this limitation by providing support to independently encapsulate the cross-cutting functionalities by separating them from the core business logic. Using AOP, it is possible to achieve dynamic binding in web service composition. To illustrate the embedding of AOP constructs into a BPEL process, this paper implements a case study on distributed e-HealthCare system. Further, two core design level properties namely, cohesion and coupling have been measured and the impact of introduction of AO into a composed BPEL process has also been discussed. Empirical evaluation of the design level properties shows that cohesion improves by the introduction of AOP in BPEL.