Service Workflow Research Articles

A Survey on Workflow Verifications of Petri Nets based Service Process Management

Service process management is a cross-discipline research topic, including computer science, management technology and economics. How to effectively integrate service resources to meet customer demands becomes a key problem to service-oriented software development. Most of existing works are in the early research stage. The scope of process management consists of process design, process execution, process mining, and process intelligence. However, it requires process modeling, which is a crucial precondition in the lifecycle of service process management. In this paper, it reviews workflow verifications of Petri Nets based service process management. First, the workflow and description supporting tools are introduced. Then, considering the composite service is an effective way to organize third-party business functions seamlessly, the Petri Nets based service workflow employed to formalizing composition behaviors is discussed. Third, components encapsulated in the composite service may be encountered functional and non-functional problems since services are offered by different organizations. The functional verification includes the correctness, reachability and safety. The non-functional verification is to evaluate the performance of Petri Nets based workflow model ranging over timed constraints and probabilistic behaviors. Therefore, it summarizes Petri Nets based workflow verification techniques to guarantee the quality of services composition. In conclusion, this survey provides academic references to researchers and developers in service computing and process management.

An ontological-based knowledge organization for bioinformatics workflow management system

Motivation and Objectives In the field of Computer Science, ontologies represent formal structures to define and organize knowledge of a specific application domain (Chandrasekaran et al., 1999). An ontology is composed of entities, called classes, and relationships among them. Classes are characterized by features, called attributes, and they can be arranged into a hierarchical organization. Ontologies are a fundamental instrument in Artificial Intelligence for the development of Knowledge-Based Systems (KBS). With its formal and well defined structure, in fact, an ontology provides a machine-understandable language that allows automatic reasoning for problems resolution. Typical KBS are Expert Systems (ES) and Decision Support Systems (DSS). ESs gather and formalize the knowledge of a human expert of a domain in order to produce inferences and recommendations given an initial query. DSSs are more interactive KBS, in the sense they offer support, rather than replacement, for the decision making process during the execution of a task, suggesting one possible strategy or tool given a set of initial conditions. DSSs are mainly adopted in the clinical field, where they are called Clinical DSS (CDSS). Ontology specification, structure and organization are then of fundamental importance for the development of a KBS. In this paper we present an improvement of our ontological approach for knowledge organization in DSS design. In our previous publication (Fiannaca et al., 2012) we defined a paradigm for ontology specification named Data Problem Solver (DPS) and we showed how our approach can be applied to bioinformatics domain, modeling the Protein-Protein Interaction Network extraction scenario. In the proposed approach, we aim at integrating into our ontology the concept of Workflow as a set of processes. Our main objective is to provide a general schema in order to add the functionalities and capability of a DSS to the more recent Workflow Management Systems, that especially in bioinformatics, with the Taverna workbench (Hull et al., 2006), represent a powerful instrument for researchers. We called our extended ontological approach Data Problem Solver Workflow (DPSW).

A conceptual process-based reference model for collaboratively managing recreational scuba diving in Kenting National Park

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to describe a management process to better control scuba diving on coral reefs. While the dive industry permits growth in local tourism revenues it can also create a degradation of the coral reefs if there are too many divers. Consequently appropriate management is essential. In this study, a case analysis of Kenting National Park was undertaken. The authors describe a process-based reference model and information system to better manage diving through collaboration by the different units, namely the divers, dive centers, the park office, the nuclear power plant bodies, the park police and the coastal guards. The management tool set of IDEF0 (Integration Definition for Function Modeling 0) was applied to describe the overall diving service workflow. An object-oriented analysis approach was then applied to represent the design of the collaborative model. A prototype web-based platform was constructed to demonstrate the model for in situ information that potentially could monitor diving and improve communication channels between the actors.

Ranking-aware integration and explorative search of distributed bio-data

Motivation and Objectives High-throughput production of both biomolecular data and their annotations is providing a rapidly increasing amount of very valuable information that can potentially help finding also long-searched answers to fundamental biomedical questions. Yet, such data deluge makes difficult to extract the information most reliable and most related to the increasingly complex biomedical questions to be answered, which can simultaneously regard many heterogeneous aspects of single or multiple organisms, biological tissues, cells or biomolecular entities. To address such complex questions, many bio-data about several heterogeneous topics, which are available but dispersed in different data sources, must be searched, extracted, integrated and comprehensively queried. Different approaches have been proposed to combine individual search services available on the Web in order to support such heterogeneous searches (Hull et al., 2006; Nekrutenko, 2010). Yet, they rarely rely on a general model of the services to be integrated and none considers, in the integration process, the often available partial rankings of the data to be integrated. Lately, Search Computing (Ceri et al., 2010) has been proposed as a new software framework to build answers to complex search queries by interacting with a collection of cooperating search services and using ranking and joining of results as the dominant factors for service composition. By leveraging the peculiar features of search services, it offers query approaches, execution plans, plan optimization techniques, query configuration tools, and exploratory user interfaces. Here, we report and discuss our work aimed at supporting the explorative search of heterogeneous distributed bio-data and the automatic integration and global ranking of their individual search results, also taking into account the partial rankings of individual searches. In so doing, we make a step towards the computational support required for complex biomedical question answering and biomedical knowledge discovery. Methods According to the Service Mart modeling approach of Search Computing (Ceri et al., 2010), we selected an initial set of typical biomolecular topics (i.e. Protein, Gene, Gene Expression and Biological Function) and modeled the Service Marts (i.e. the generalized and normalized conceptual description) of the bioinformatics services that provide data regarding such topics. We did so by identifying their main and common attributes and normalizing their names. We also defined the semantic Connection Patterns, i.e. the pair-wise coupling, between Service Marts of services that provide data about different topics. This was done by identifying pairs of normalized attributes of the connected Service Marts and defining their comparison predicates, as conjunctive Boolean expressions, that allow joining their values semantically. In so doing, we defined the Semantic Resource Framework (SRF) depicted in Figure 1, which constitutes the reference used by Search Computing to enable the exploration of the services registered in the framework and integrate the data that they provide (Ceri et al., 2010). Then, using available Search Computing tools, we registered in the Search Computing framework five bioinformatics search services that provide data about the topics and semantic associations described in the biomolecular

An ontological-based knowledge organization for bioinformatics workflow management system

An ontological-based knowledge organization for bioinformatics workflow management system

The BioVel Project: Robust phylogenetic workflows running on the GRID

The BioVel Project: Robust phylogenetic workflows running on the GRID

SWSpec: The Requirements Specification Language in Service Workflow Environments

Advanced technologies have changed the nature of business processes in the form of services. In coordinating services to achieve a particular objective, service workflow is used to control service composition, execution sequences as well as path selection. Since existing mechanisms are insufficient for addressing the diversity and dynamicity of the requirements in a large-scale distributed environment, developing formal requirements specification is necessary. In this paper, we propose a Service Workflow Specification language, called SWSpec, which allows arbitrary services in a workflow to formally and uniformly impose their requirements. As such, the solution will provide a formal way to regulate and control workflows as well as enrich the proliferation of service provisions and consumptions in opened environments.

Using Propositional Logic for Requirements Verification of Service Workflow

This paper presents a requirement-oriented automated framework for formal verification of service workflows. It is based on our previous work describing the requirement-oriented service workflow specification language called SWSpec. This language has been developed to facilitate workflow composer as well as arbitrary services willing to participate in a workflow to formally and uniformly impose their own requirements. As such, SWSpec provides a formal way to regulate and control workflows. The key component of the to-be-proposed framework centers on verification algorithms that rely on propositional logic. We demonstrate that logic-based workflow verification can be applied to SWSpec which is capable of checking compliance and also detecting conflicts of the imposed requirements. By automating compliance checking process, this framework will support scalable services interoperation in the form of workflows in opened environments.

Composition of Optimal Service Workflows with Quality-of-Service Enabled Multi-Criteria Uniform Cost Search Algorithm

This paper proposes a search-based method to partly automate the workflow composition, including the planning and execution stages, with web services in a service-oriented architecture. The proposed methodology models the workflow composition problem as a directed and weighted graph, henceforth called the service-oriented architecture graph, where vertices are associated with the degree of completion of the overall task at hand and edges represent service executions. Edge weights are formulated based on the quality of services as defined by the user. A uniform cost search algorithm is adapted and applied to identify the optimal path based on user input, which constitutes an ordered sequence of service executions, from a given initial state to a user-defined goal state. The proposed approach for service oriented workflow composition was applied to an information-technology domain problem to demonstrate its utility through a simulation study. Simulation results indicated that the proposed methodology is feasible and optimal solutions can be computed within reasonable computational cost bounds.

A framework for smart workflow services in agricultural environments

To improve work efficiency and productivity in agricultural environment, which may naturally be protean, unpredictable and laborious, many researchers have made attempts to apply information technology in the field of conventional agriculture. Especially, they have great concern toward a reasonable and reliable service control model or architecture to control agricultural works automatically and smartly. This article proposes a framework to support context-aware or smart services in agricultural environments, based on a context-aware workflow model and USN/RFID. The suggested framework is focused on supporting autonomous agricultural services in the fields of growth control, protection against disease and insects, and the output control of the agricultural computing environment using a workflow model which is one of the successful service automation models, using contexts from various sensors in agricultural fields. The proposed framework, based on a context-aware workflow, can be greatly helpful in the development of smart applications or work automation in the field of agriculture.

Tying it all Together—A Watershed Moment in the Media Industry

In July of 1998, the joint SMPTE/European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Task Force for Harmonized Standards for the Exchange of Program Material as Bitstreams published its Final Report: Analyses and Results. Now some 13 years later, the basic framework outlined in this report is becoming a reality. However, more than this, the framework allows innovative media companies and manufacturers to expand the power and possibilities of the framework well beyond what was envisioned when the report was published. This paper connects the dots among serial digital interface (SDI), image compression, the invention of the Advanced Authoring Format/Material eXchange Format (AAF/MXF) data model, the MXF wrapper format, the subsequent development of AS-02, AS-03, and other MXF application specifications, developments in high-speed networking technology and network security, the SMPTE 2022 Standard for Professional Video over IP transmission, the recent activities of the Hollywood-based ETC's Interoperable Mastering Format (IMF), which has recently moved into SMPTE, and the Advanced Media Workflow Association/European Broadcasting Union (AMWA/EBU) Task Force on the Framework for Interoperable Media Services (FIMS), concentrating on service-oriented media workflows. I posit that we are at a watershed moment in the industry, which will create new opportunities, and even perhaps new media businesses that do not exist today.

Nonintrusive collection and management of data provenance in scientific workflows

SUMMARYIn this paper, we introduce an efficient mechanism to collect, store, and retrieve data provenance information in workflows of multiphysics simulations. Using notifications, we enable the nonintrusive collection of information about workflow events during workflow execution. Combining these events with workflow structure information, constant for every execution of a workflow, we obtain the data provenance information for the specific run of the workflow. Data provenance information is structured into a graph that represents workflow events on the basis of their causal dependency. We use a graph database to store this graph and utilize the traversal framework provided, to efficiently retrieve data provenance information from the graph by traversing backwards from a data object to every workflow event that is part of its provenance. Finally, we integrate data provenance information with semantics of workflow services to provide complete and meaningful data provenance information. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Tav4SB: integrating tools for analysis of kinetic models of biological systems

BackgroundProgress in the modeling of biological systems strongly relies on the availability of specialized computer-aided tools. To that end, the Taverna Workbench eases integration of software tools for life science research and provides a common workflow-based framework for computational experiments in Biology.ResultsThe Taverna services for Systems Biology (Tav4SB) project provides a set of new Web service operations, which extend the functionality of the Taverna Workbench in a domain of systems biology. Tav4SB operations allow you to perform numerical simulations or model checking of, respectively, deterministic or stochastic semantics of biological models. On top of this functionality, Tav4SB enables the construction of high-level experiments. As an illustration of possibilities offered by our project we apply the multi-parameter sensitivity analysis. To visualize the results of model analysis a flexible plotting operation is provided as well. Tav4SB operations are executed in a simple grid environment, integrating heterogeneous software such as Mathematica, PRISM and SBML ODE Solver. The user guide, contact information, full documentation of available Web service operations, workflows and other additional resources can be found at the Tav4SB project’s Web page: http://bioputer.mimuw.edu.pl/tav4sb/.ConclusionsThe Tav4SB Web service provides a set of integrated tools in the domain for which Web-based applications are still not as widely available as for other areas of computational biology. Moreover, we extend the dedicated hardware base for computationally expensive task of simulating cellular models. Finally, we promote the standardization of models and experiments as well as accessibility and usability of remote services.

A formal model of agent-oriented virtual organisations and their formation

We present a formal model for agent-oriented Virtual Organisations VOs for service grids and we study an associated operational model for the creation of VOs. The model is intended to be used for describing different service grid applications based on multiple agents and, as a result, it abstracts away from any realisation choices of service grid applications, the agents involved to support the applications and their interactions. Within the proposed framework VOs are created within societies of agents, where agents are abstractly characterised by goals and roles they can play within VOs. In turn, VOs are abstractly characterised by the agents participating in them with specific roles, as well as the workflow of services and corresponding contracts suitable for achieving the goals of the participating agents. We illustrate the proposed framework with an earth observation scenario, we discuss implementation issues, and we compare our approach with existing work.

A New E-Government Service Discovery Method based on Similarity

With the development of the E-Government, government portal has integrated a great deal of service information. The traditional methods of service discovery can not meet the diverse needs of users. Based on the current research, this paper proposed a new similarity-based method for e-government service discovery. The current static service workflows are re-combined to make them dynamic and more flexible. Then the most appropriate service is recommended to users by matching all similar services with users’ demands. It shows the web services of government portal are more intelligent and personalized. Experiments show that the method has more advantages than keyword-based method or ontology-based method.

Smart home architecture based on event-driven DPWS

With the advances of electronic information technology and computer network, especially the embedded technology, smart home is no more just a vision but being practical. The interoperability of heterogeneous devices and flexibility of devices' usage are two key problems that challenge the implementation of smart home. To deal with these two issues, this paper proposes an event-driven service oriented architecture using device profile for web services (DPWS). DPWS inherits the advantages of the traditional web services in achieving interoperability without dependence on platform, while improving service discovery and security as well as being optimized for deploying on resource constrained devices. By providing a visual interface for describing a service workflow (SW), the user can easily customize the actions of devices by services composition. Devices automatically cooperate without user's intervention to complete required business logic. This is achieved by fully exploiting the eventing capabilities on DPWS enabled home devices. Finally, a home theater scenario is given to illustrate the event driven mechanism for the SW in the proposed smart home framework.

New Roads for Patron-Driven E-Books: Collection Development and Technical Services Implications of a Patron-Driven Acquisitions Pilot at Rutgers

Collection development librarians have long struggled to meet user demands for new titles. Too often, required resources are not purchased, whereas some purchased resources do not circulate. E-books selected through patron-driven plans are a solution but present new challenges for both selectors and catalogers. Radical changes to traditional technical services workflows are required, and selectors must modify the selection process to give more choice to the user. Rutgers University librarians have adopted an innovative new technical services workflow and collection-development model to manage a successful, patron-driven acquisitions project for e-books in the fields of math and computer science.

A role-oriented service system architecture for enterprise process collaboration

Workflow management is a key technique for coordinating various business processes. Traditional workflow systems are often built with the client/server architecture, in which, a single workflow server takes the responsibility of the entire operation. This paper discusses a model-driven process enactment environment, which can support an enterprise businesses collaboration. Some key technologies regarding models and the system are discussed in the paper, including the mappings between activities in process models and the service function of applications, how to use XML in the process model, and other workflow engine techniques. A software architecture supporting role-oriented services within the process-driven enterprise enactment environment has been proposed and implemented. The proposed framework has been validated with a case study in the 4PL business system.

Grid Workflow Service Composition Based on Colored Petri Net

This paper presents a model of grid workflow service composition based on colored Petri net that can represent complex session protocols and the component service composition, using token of color of colored Petri net to simulate the different events and message types of business processes. The service session agreement and the grid workflow service composition are converted to colored Petri net, which can make use of the specialized tools of existing Petri net to analyze and verify system performance and behavior properties, thereby enhancing the reliability of the grid workflow service composition.

Robust Execution of Service Workflows Using Redundancy and Advance Reservations

In this paper, we develop a novel algorithm that allows service consumers to execute business processes (or workflows) of interdependent services in a dependable manner within tight time-constraints. In particular, we consider large interorganizational service-oriented systems, where services are offered by external organizations that demand financial remuneration and where their use has to be negotiated in advance using explicit service-level agreements (as is common in Grids and cloud computing). Here, different providers often offer the same type of service at varying levels of quality and price. Furthermore, some providers may be less trustworthy than others, possibly failing to meet their agreements. To control this unreliability and ensure end-to-end dependability while maximizing the profit obtained from completing a business process, our algorithm automatically selects the most suitable providers. Moreover, unlike existing work, it reasons about the dependability properties of a workflow, and it controls these by using service redundancy for critical tasks and by planning for contingencies. Finally, our algorithm reserves services for only parts of its workflow at any time, in order to retain flexibility when failures occur. We show empirically that our algorithm consistently outperforms existing approaches, achieving up to a 35-fold increase in profit and successfully completing most workflows, even when the majority of providers fail.