Service-based Processes Research Articles

Continuous service-based process monitoring using Pareto analysis and start-end case diagram

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to offer a straightforward, cost-effective, and feasible resolution for managers to assess their processes in a live manner using the process mining technique and to identify anomalies in cases that deviate from the standard. Consequently, the findings of this research can be utilized by organizational managers, while process mining vendors can also leverage it as a feature for their solutions.Design/methodology/approachOur two-step method is designed to initially evaluate the level of standardization within the process, followed by identifying its underlying cause. These two steps are aimed at helping managers effectively evaluate their business processes. The steps are: (1). Start-End Case Diagram: This diagram allows for the evaluation of the lead time trend and identification of cases that deviate from the standard trend line in a service-based process. (2). Happy Path Analysis: Pareto law is suggested to identify the most frequent process variants.FindingsThis approach enables organizations to easily identify problematic cases and investigate bottlenecks when deviations from the standards occur.Originality/valueThe novelty of the paper lies in the introduction and utilization of the start-end case diagram, as well as the combination of this diagram with the Pareto law for the identification of happy path and root cause analysis.

Service Re-Selection for Disruptive Events in Mobile Environments: A Heuristic Technique for Decision Support at Runtime

Modern service-based processes in mobile environments are highly complex due to the necessary spatial–temporal coordination between multiple participating users and the consideration of context information. Due to the dynamic nature of mobile environments, disruptive events occur at runtime, which require a re-selection of the planned service compositions respecting multiple users and context-awareness. Thereby, when re-selecting services the features performance, solution quality, solution robustness and alternative solutions are essential and contribute to the efficacy of service systems. This paper presents an optimization-based heuristic technique based on a stateful representation that uses a region-based approach to re-select services considering multiple users, context information and in particular disruptive events at runtime. The evaluation results, which are based on a real-world scenario from the tourism domain, show that the proposed heuristic is superior compared to competing artifacts.

Ansätze zur Integration von Ökosystemleistungen in die formelle räumliche Planung

Due to global changes and changes in land use, ecosystems and their services are increasingly affected. Against this background, it is questionable how ecosystems and the services they provide can be better and sufficiently taken into account in land-use planning as well as spatial development in Germany. Currently little chance is seen to establish new ecosystem service-based processes that would be comprehensively integrated in the spatial planning practice in Germany. However, modernisation of formal and informal planning instruments is conceived in a long-term perspective. The ecosystem service approach can essentially contribute to this modernisa[1]tion methodically as well as conceptually. Therefore, this paper discusses possibilities how to integrate the ecosystem service approach in formal spatial planning in a short to medium term and which societal and ecological added value can be generated. Chances and risks of different implementation options will be discussed and specific approaches outlined.

Automatic assessment of adherence of terms and conditions of web service-based process

Automatic assessment of adherence of terms and conditions of web service-based process

Automatic assessment of adherence of terms and conditions of web service-based process

Automatic assessment of adherence of terms and conditions of web service-based process

Resilience and Elasticity for Continuous Service-Based Processes in Pandemic Ages

COVID-19 has turned service-based business continuity into a hot issue, due to the survival of enterprises under long-tailed changes of business caused by various abnormal socioeconomic events and disruptions. We analyze how current techniques enable small and medium enterprises to be resilient and elastic. From observations of service disruptions during COVID-19 and problems with current technologies for resilience and elasticity, we recommend addressing resilience and elasticity requirements through contextual service information and hybrid services coordination programming and serving.

Model Analysis and Simulation of Equipment-Manufacturing Value Chain Integration Process

The servitization of construction enterprises based on value chain integration means that construction enterprises use prefabricated buildings and combine advantageous resources to integrate preconstruction feasibility analysis, investment and financing services, design, etc., and postconstruction decoration, operation and maintenance, and waste disposal. This article takes the equipment-manufacturing industry as the research object, and based on the analysis of the service-based value chain integration process, it puts forward research hypotheses, constructs research models, and conducts data simulation research to explore how the equipment-manufacturing industry can realize the logic of industrial value through service reintegration and optimization reveal the changing laws and key influencing factors of the equipment-manufacturing industry’s value-added capabilities during this process. The results show that the industrial connection density, service element embedding methods, and knowledge absorption capacity have a significant impact on the value-added ability of the equipment-manufacturing industry during the integration process. The increase in industrial connection density promotes the enhancement of value-added capabilities, and it is significant at the initial stage and then weakened. Both the input-side and output-side service element embedding can affect the value-added ability, but the effects of the two are different. The improvement of knowledge absorptive capacity can promote the occurrence of service innovation, thereby enhancing the value-added capacity of the equipment-manufacturing industry.

A Novel Tool for Configurable Process Evolution and Service Derivation

In recent years, variability management in business processes is considered a key of reuse. Research works in this field focused mainly on variability modeling and resolution; whereas, evolution has been somehow neglected. In fact, new business requirements may occur, and business processes must evolve in order to meet the new needs. Furthermore, the evolution at business layer represented by configurable processes impact the IT layer represented by services. In this case, it is necessary to synchronize the changes between these two layers. In other words, the alignment of configurable processes and configurable services must occur to maintain an integrated view of an organization. This can be reached by the concept of service-based configurable processes. The study of existing tools in this domain shows the lack of solutions integrating both the evolution management, and the change propagation with respect to the variability. This article aims to represent the CPMEv, a novel tool for evolution management of service-based configurable processes.

Semantic composition of optimal process service plans in manufacturing with ODERU

PurposeThe need to flexibly react to changing demands and to cost-efficiently manage customized production even for lot size of one requires a dynamic and holistic integration of service-based processes within and across enterprises of the value chain. In this context, this paper aims at presenting ODERU, the authors’ novel pragmatic approach for automatically implementing service-based manufacturing processes at design and runtime within a cloud-based elastic manufacturing platform.Design/methodology/approachODERU relies on a set of semantic annotations of business process models encoded into an extension of the business process model and notation (BPMN) 2.0 standard. Leveraging the paradigms of semantic SOA and XaaS, ODERU integrates pattern-based semantic composition of process service plans with QoS-based optimization based on multi-objective constraint optimization problem solving.FindingsThe successful validation of ODERU in two industrial use cases for maintenance process optimization and automotive production in the European project CREMA revealed its usefulness for service-based process optimization in general and for significant cost reductions in maintenance in particular.Originality/valueODERU provides a pragmatic and flexible solution to optimal service composition with the following three main advantages: full integration of semantic service selection and composition with QoS-based optimization; executability of the generated optimal process service plans by an execution environment as they include service assignments, data flow (variable bindings) and optimal variable assignments; and support of fast replanning in a single model and plan.

PM 7/28 (2) Synchytrium endobioticum

Specific scopeThis Standard describes a diagnostic protocol for Synchytrium endobioticum.This Standard should be used in conjunction with PM 7/76 Use of EPPO diagnostic protocols.Specific approval and amendmentApproved in 2003‐09. Revision approved in 2017‐06.

Adaptation and Evolution Frameworks for Service Based Inter-Organizational Workflows

This paper describes pattern-based frameworks for adaptation and evolution of service-based workflow process models meeting specific cooperation patterns widely recognized in the B2B area. In the authors' previous works, they focused on restructuring and interconnecting workflows using the SOA paradigm so as to deal with more flexible inter-organizational workflow (IOWF) models. The main issue of this paper is the question of flexibility of IOWF process models where the authors distinguish two main aspects: adaptability and evolutivity affecting different levels of the IOWF process. For that, they define three categories of adptation called functional, behavioral and interactional adaptations and two categories of evolution called functional evolution and organizational evolution; then, they conceptualize some adaptation and evolution patterns which can be applied on the IOWF process models. The authors' adaptation and evolution frameworks are developed according to the MVC pattern and operate on process models specified with BPEL. Thanks to their high modularity, the frameworks are easily extensible and allow the reusing of patterns to implement other ones.

Patterns and tools for business process monitoring customization

In a cross-organizational service-based process provisioning scenario, one provider is likely to execute a given business process to serve several customers. Each customer may hold different expectations about the way this process can be monitored. We present a solution allowing the provider to support the requirements of different customers on the monitoring of a given process, i.e., offering them the opportunity to customize the way a process will be monitored. We propose a multi-dimensional classification model of patterns for process monitoring and rules to compose the patterns to design customized monitoring infrastructures. The fit for purpose of the patterns is evaluated empirically, whereas the feasibility of our solution is demonstrated by a tool supporting process monitoring customization adhering to our pattern design and composition methodology.

Integrating Transactions into BPEL Service Compositions

The concept of software as a service has been increasingly adopted to develop distributed applications. Ensuring the reliability of loosely coupled compositions is a challenging task because of the open, dynamic, and independent nature of composable services; this is especially true when the execution of a service-based process relies on independent but correlated services. Transactions are the prototypical case of compositions spanning across multiple services and needing properties to be valid throughout the whole execution. Although transaction protocols and service composition languages have been proposed in the past decade, a true viable and effective solution is still missing. In this article, we propose a systematic aspect-based approach to integrating transactions into service compositions, taking into account the well-known protocols: Web Service Transaction and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). In our approach, transaction policies are first defined as a set of aspects. They are then converted to standard BPEL elements. Finally, these transaction-related elements and the original BPEL process are weaved together, resulting in a transactional executable BPEL process. At runtime, transaction management is the responsibility of a middleware, which implements the coordination framework and transaction protocols followed by the transactional BPEL process and transaction-aware Web services. To automate the proposed approach, we developed a supporting platform called Salan to aid the tasks of defining, validating, and weaving aspect-based transaction policies, and of deploying the transactional BPEL processes. By means of a case study, we demonstrate the proposed approach and evaluate the performance of the supporting platform. Experimental results show that this approach is effective in producing reliable business processes while reducing the need for direct human involvement.

A pattern-based approach for workflow interconnection and flexibility support

This paper describes a new approach for interconnection and flexibility support of service-based workflow processes. We consider specific architectures of inter-organisational workflows IOWF fairly widespread in the B2B area defining different cooperation schemas; our final objective is to deal with flexibility of IOWF models obeying to these schemas. First, by introducing a new concept called service-based cooperation pattern SBCP, we define new generic IOWF-architectures using the SOA paradigm to support process models flexible enough for easing their adaptation, evolution and reuse. A SBCP is defined through three main dimensions: the distribution of services among the partner's sites, the control of instance execution and the structure of interaction between services. Furthermore, to support changes affecting the IOWF models, we define three categories of adaptation patterns according to the three dimensions defining a SBCP; we also exhibit aspects of evolution and reuse of IOWF models using generalised and composite cooperation patterns.

A Framework for Negotiating Service Level Agreement of Cloud-based Services

Abstract Cloud-based services have become the backbone of IT industry nowadays and the promising technology that offers a commoditized service to the software, the platform and the infrastructure where they are delivered as a service. Because several providers have started to offer a vast diversity of Cloud services, Cloud customers became unable to decide whose services they should use and what is the basis for their selection. Therefore, a legal contract is necessarily needed for negotiating these both Cloud parties. This contract is referred to Service Level Agreement (SLA). A SLA negotiation between Cloud parties assists in defining the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of critical service-based processes. In addition, the role of third party in the negotiation process that is represented in Cloud broker will recommend customers to achieve the required service efficiently when negotiating with multiple providers. Currently, there is no framework that can allow customers to evaluate Cloud offerings and rank them based on their interests. Thus it is important to have a methodology that might map the customers’ requirements referred as Service Level Objectives (SLO) with the most reliable Cloud service. In this work, we address this problem by presenting a proposed framework that intends to empower customers to evaluate and select between the different Cloud service offerings. This proposed framework aims to formalize the SLA with precise and unambiguous definition of services key performance indicators (KPIs) to support automated negotiation on the details of the agreement for both contracted parties. Our reasoning evaluation of proposed framework proved the importance of negotiation process for both Cloud parties in mapping the Cloud services with the customers’ requirements.

Self-Healing Service-Based Processes

Self-Healing Service-Based Processes

Enforcement of entailment constraints in distributed service-based business processes

ContextA distributed business process is executed in a distributed computing environment. The service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm is a popular option for the integration of software services and execution of distributed business processes. Entailment constraints, such as mutual exclusion and binding constraints, are important means to control process execution. Mutually exclusive tasks result from the division of powerful rights and responsibilities to prevent fraud and abuse. In contrast, binding constraints define that a subject who performed one task must also perform the corresponding bound task(s). ObjectiveWe aim to provide a model-driven approach for the specification and enforcement of task-based entailment constraints in distributed service-based business processes. MethodBased on a generic metamodel, we define a domain-specific language (DSL) that maps the different modeling-level artifacts to the implementation-level. The DSL integrates elements from role-based access control (RBAC) with the tasks that are performed in a business process. Process definitions are annotated using the DSL, and our software platform uses automated model transformations to produce executable WS-BPEL specifications which enforce the entailment constraints. We evaluate the impact of constraint enforcement on runtime performance for five selected service-based processes from existing literature. ResultsOur evaluation demonstrates that the approach correctly enforces task-based entailment constraints at runtime. The performance experiments illustrate that the runtime enforcement operates with an overhead that scales well up to the order of several ten thousand logged invocations. Using our DSL annotations, the user-defined process definition remains declarative and clean of security enforcement code. ConclusionOur approach decouples the concerns of (non-technical) domain experts from technical details of entailment constraint enforcement. The developed framework integrates seamlessly with WS-BPEL and the Web services technology stack. Our prototype implementation shows the feasibility of the approach, and the evaluation points to future work and further performance optimizations.

SOA-enabled compliance management: instrumenting, assessing, and analyzing service-based business processes

Facilitating compliance management, that is, assisting a company's management in conforming to laws, regulations, standards, contracts, and policies, is a hot but non-trivial task. The service-oriented architecture (SOA) has evolved traditional, manual business practices into modern, service-based IT practices that ease part of the problem: the systematic definition and execution of business processes. This, in turn, facilitates the online monitoring of system behaviors and the enforcement of allowed behaviors--all ingredients that can be used to assist compliance management on the fly during process execution. In this paper, instead of focusing on monitoring and runtime enforcement of rules or constraints, we strive for an alternative approach to compliance management in SOAs that aims at assessing and improving compliance. We propose two ingredients: (i) a model and tool to design compliant service-based processes and to instrument them in order to generate evidence of how they are executed and (ii) a reporting and analysis suite to create awareness of a company's compliance state and to enable understanding why and where compliance violations have occurred. Together, these ingredients result in an approach that is close to how the real stakeholders--compliance experts and auditors--actually assess the state of compliance in practice and that is less intrusive than enforcing compliance.

Reo + mCRL2 : A framework for model-checking dataflow in service compositions

Abstract The paradigm of service-oriented computing revolutionized the field of software engineering. According to this paradigm, new systems are composed of existing stand-alone services to support complex cross-organizational business processes. Correct communication of these services is not possible without a proper coordination mechanism. The Reo coordination language is a channel-based modeling language that introduces various types of channels and their composition rules. By composing Reo channels, one can specify Reo connectors that realize arbitrary complex behavioral protocols. Several formalisms have been introduced to give semantics to Reo. In their most basic form, they reflect service synchronization and dataflow constraints imposed by connectors. To ensure that the composed system behaves as intended, we need a wide range of automated verification tools to assist service composition designers. In this paper, we present our framework for the verification of Reo using the mCRL2 toolset. We unify our previous work on mapping various semantic models for Reo, namely, constraint automata, timed constraint automata, coloring semantics and the newly developed action constraint automata, to the process algebraic specification language of mCRL2, address the correctness of this mapping, discuss tool support, and present a detailed example that illustrates the use of Reo empowered with mCRL2 for the analysis of dataflow in service-based process models.

Special issue on business process lifecycle: design, deployment, operation and evaluation

Keywords: Business Process ; Lifecycle ; Deployment Reference EPFL-ARTICLE-176301doi:10.1002/smr.559View record in Web of Science Record created on 2012-04-19, modified on 2017-05-12