A framework for behavior consistent specialization of artifact-centric business processes

A Framework for Behavior-Consistent
Specialization of Artifact-Centric
Business Processes
Sira Yongchareon1, Chengfei Liu1, and Xiaohui Zhao2
1Faculty of Information & Communication Technologies
Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
2Faculty of Information Sciences and Engineering
University of Canberra, Australia

BPM’12, 3-6 September 2012, Tallinn, Estonia

Outline
 Introduction
 Artifact-centric process modeling
 Motivation and issues in specialization

 A framework for specializing artifact-centric processes
 Specialization methods
 Behavioural consistency

 Conclusion

Sira Yongchareon, Chengfei Liu, and Xiaohui Zhao 2

Introduction : ACP Modeling
 Artifact-Centric Process (ACP) modeling approach
 Focuses on business artifact (entities), e.g., Purchase Order,
Invoice
 How they evolve from creation to completion (or archived)
throughout a process
Purchase Order (PO)
approving confirmed supplying filled
Synchronization
canceled

closed billing delivering

Shipping Order (SO)
arrived In transit

Invoice (IV)
cleared unpaid issued


Introduction : ACP Modeling
 A simple ACP Model
 Consists of (1) Artifact classes (with attributes and states), (2) Tasks,
and (3) Business rules (ECA with post-condition)
Purchase Order (PO)
Synchronization (by sync rule)
canceled


Shipping Order (SO)
arrived In transit

Invoice (IV)


Introduction : Motivation to specialization
Online Purchasing Generic Purchasing Offline Purchasing
specializes specializes
Process Model Process Model Process Model

Quote

Shipping Online Purchase Shipping Offline Shipping Offline
Web PO Invoice
Order Invoice Order Order PO Order Invoice

 Facilitate natural reuse
 Likewise in an object-oriented design approach  artifact-centric
approach lends itself to componentization in a natural way
 Enable different levels of comparison and reporting across
specializations (at both artifact and process levels)
 How many (both Online and Offline) invoice not yet cleared ?
 From those, how many order already arrived to customers?  A
supplier urgently needs to collect those debts 


Introduction : Motivating Example
 Specializing a purchasing process (in supply chain domain)
Purchase Order (PO)

canceled


Shipping Order (SO)
arrived In transit

Invoice (IV)

Buyer (L1) Supplier (L2) Logistics (L3)
Purchase Order (PO)
created confirmed accepted filled ready to ship

on hold canceled acquiring


Quote (Q) Picking List (PL) Delivery Note (DN)
approved rejected transferring
Out of stock Filled order ready to fill

created approving checking In stock prepared dispatched

Payment (P) Shipping Order (SO)
sent
created scheduled In transit

arrived
approving created

Invoice (IV) Shipping List (SL)

cleared waiting Queued

clearing sent issued completed picked


Introduction : Issues
 How to define specialization
 Existing OO specialization approaches insufficient
 No definition for a process that consists of several objects
 Therefore, a process still treated as a single object

 Dependencies between objects need to be considered

 How to preserve behavioral consistency
 That allows aggregate monitoring/reporting (of instances of
different subtypes that belong to the same supertype)
 Requires observation consistency [Schrefel and Stumptner, 2002]
(or projection inheritance in [van der Aalst and Basten, 2002])
 Note that specialization is done at the artifact level while the
consistency is preserved at the process level

Framework : Overview

Base business Specialized business
specializes
process model process model ’

Behavior-consistent
process specialization

Behavior of consistent with Behavior of ’


Framework : Overview
 Specialization methods
 Artifact refinement
 Refine an existing artifact in a specialized process
 An existing business rule refined into a set of specialized rules (may
include sync rules)
 Artifact extension
 Add a new artifact in a specialized process
 New business rules added (includes sync rules between existing
artifact(s) and the added artifact)
 Artifact reduction (not in the paper)
 Delete an existing artifact
 Existing business rules deleted/modified (abstracted)


Framework : The Big Picture


Framework : Behavior Models
Lifecycle composition


Framework : ACP Specialization


Framework : B-Consistency


Framework : Lifecycle fragment


Framework : Atomicity property
 Atomic L-fragments (AL-fragments)
 For individual L-fragment
 Based on SESE fragment (multiple entry/exit transitions allowed)

 AL-fragments preserve B-consistency for refining a transition that
has no sync
 For synchronized L-fragments (between artifacts)
 Need to consider all related fragments it synchronizes with
 Based on sync rules used between synchronized fragments


Framework : Synchronization Region



NAL-fragment

AL-fragment


 AS-region and B-consistency
 Composition of all L-fragments in AS-region yields a
(composite) AL-fragment in a specialized process
 ….and AL-fragment preserves B-consistency
 Therefore, AS-region preserves B-consistency (between
processes)
 AS-region as a condition when applying specialization
methods to guarantee the B-consistency between a
specialized process and its base process


Framework : B-consistent Specialization
 B-consistent artifact refinement (with sync)
 Refining a transition that sync with other artifact(s) by
replacing the transition with synchronized L-fragment

 Refined synchronized L-fragments must be able to form an
AS-region


 B-consistent artifact extension
 Adding a new artifact and synchronizing it with existing
artifact(s) on refined L-fragment(s)

 Added artifact must be able to form an AS-region with
existing artifact(s)


 More complicated examples
 Artifact refinement with nested refined fragment(s)
C1
l1 C2 C3
s1 s3 s5 s1 s1
l5 s6
l3
s2 s4 l2
s2 s2

C4
s1 s2 s3 s3 s3 s4
l4

 Multiple artifact extensions & refinements


Framework: Example revisit
Purchase Order (PO)

canceled


Shipping Order (SO)
arrived In transit

Invoice (IV)

Buyer (L1) Supplier (L2) Logistics (L3)
Purchase Order (PO)
created confirmed accepted filled ready to ship

on hold canceled acquiring


Quote (Q) Picking List (PL) Delivery Note (DN)
approved rejected transferring
Out of stock Filled order ready to fill

created approving checking In stock prepared dispatched

Payment (P) Shipping Order (SO)
sent
created scheduled In transit

arrived
approving created

Invoice (IV) Shipping List (SL)

cleared waiting Queued

clearing sent issued completed picked


Framework : Ongoing work
 Given any L-fragment of an artifact in the process, find
the minimal AS-region that includes such fragment
 Help to decide whether a refinement/extension in the
specialized process is valid
 Help to find all possible synchronized L-fragments that will
be affected by the reduction (abstraction) of artifact


Conclusion
 Behavior-Consistent Specialization framework
 Facilitate natural reuse of BPs with the support of reporting/monitoring at
both artifact and process levels
 Observation consistency
 B-consistency notion – based on weak bi-simulation
 AS-region notion for synchronized fragments

 B-consistent Specialization methods
 Artifact refinement
 Artifact extension
 Artifact reduction (opposite to extension)

 Future work
 Consider nested (composite) states with parallelism (within an artifact)
 Extend analysis for a finer bi-simulation (e.g., branching, rooted bi-
simulation  observation congruence)

Thank you


A framework for behavior consistent specialization of artifact-centric business processes

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A framework for behavior consistent specialization of artifact-centric business processes