An Artifact-centric View-based Approach to Modeling Inter-organizational Business Processes
1. Sira Yongchareon1
, Chengfei Liu1
, and Xiaohui Zhao2
1
Faculty of Information & Communication Technologies
Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
2
Faculty of Creative Industries and Business
Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand
An Artifact-centric View-based
Approach to Modeling Inter-
organizational Business Processes
WISE’11, 12-14 October 2011, Sydney, Australia
2. WISE’11, 12-14 October 2011, Sydney, Australia
Sira Yongchareon, Chengfei Liu, and Xiaohui Zhao 2
Introduction & Related works
Motivation & Issues
Artifact-centric Collaboration Model (ACC model)
ACC Construction method – a view-based approach
ACC Verification
Changes and Validation
Conclusion
Outline
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Inter-organizational workflows
Introduction : Inter-org workflows
Taken from Chebbi, I, et al. Data & Knowledge Engineering 56 (2006)
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Public view can be used to facilitate the inter-org coordination
Introduction : Inter-org workflows
Taken from Chebbi, I, et al. Data & Knowledge Engineering 56 (2006)
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Process view framework for (traditional) inter-org workflow
management
Introduction : Inter-org workflows
From Jiang, P, et al. Advanced Engineering Informatics 24 (2010)
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Issues on current task-based approaches
Process still inflexible? Due to procedural nature of task-based model
(and contract)
How to ensure that the changes can preserve both local and global goals?
Contract not formed by goals of all participants, but their task interactions
Data related issues? Due to lack of holistic view of data in the model
Most control decisions made based on “data” How to preserve the
integrity and consistency of data effected by the change of tasks?
How key data interested by business stakeholders can be modelled and
monitored?
Artifact-centric workflow modeling an emerging and
promising approach that can tackle those issues
Introduction : An emerging approach
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Introduction : Artifact-centric model
Business Artifacts and their lifecycle – Purchasing
process example
The purchasing process starts when a buyer places a purchase order
to a supplier for particular products and it ends when the buyer pays an
invoice.
The shipping process starts when the supplier requests a logistic to
create a shipping order and it ends when the items arrives to the buyer
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Introduction : How they glued together
Business rules – to associate artifacts and tasks
sync rule
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Introduction : High-level framework
4-Dimensional Framework for Artifact-Centric Business
Process Modeling (Hull, R., CoopIS 2008)
Business artifacts
Macro Lifecycles
Services (Tasks)
Associations
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Introduction : Artifacts in inter-org
Business Artifacts in the inter-org processes
Local artifact – involved in a single org (cross-department is possible)
Shared artifact – involved cross-organizational process Part of a
“message” passing between orgs?
What are the “concerns” in the collaborative environment?
Flexibility Need to allow organization to freely change and implement its own
responsible part of the collaboration
Autonomy Changes can be done locally and privately without revealing any
private parts to others
Compliance Changes made to the private parts conform to the “agreed
contract” and do not interfere the overall process
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Issues and challenges?
How to define/model inter-org processes by using
artifact-centric modeling approach
How to guarantee a desired behavior of inter-org
processes
How to validate changes occurring within local
processes but may impact the overall collaboration
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From Private view to Public view to “Service Contract”
To achieve high-degree of autonomy, flexibility, and compliance
of inter-org processes
Process view approach
Taken from van der Aalst, W.M.P., et al. The Computer Journal 53(1) (2010)
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Construct private view – a complete (concrete) local
process owned by each individual organization
Construct public view of local process – an abstracted
version of private view that is publicly visible to every
organization
By applying state condensation technique on the lifecycle of artifact
(Yongchareon, S. et al., CoopIS 2010)
Construct ACC model - an integration of all views in the
collaboration
Construction method
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Private/Public view construction - Running example.
Purchasing process consists of three core artifacts: Purchase
Order, Shipping Order, and Invoice
The purchasing process starts when a buyer places a purchase order to a
supplier for particular products and it ends when the buyer pays an invoice.
The shipping process starts when the supplier requests a logistic to create a
shipping order and it ends when the items arrives to the buyer
Construction method
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Private/Public view construction – Buyer’s view
Buyer’s private process consists of Purchase Order, Quote, and
Invoice artifacts
Purchase Order and Invoice are shared artifacts
Quote is local artifact (belong only to Buyer’s local process)
Construction method
Synchronization dependency
Private-to-public view abstraction
we denote it as p(buyer)
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Private/Public view construction – Supplier’s view
Supplier’s private process consists of Purchase Order, Picking List,
Shipping Order, and Invoice artifacts
Notice changes in Purchase Order Buyer’s local part disappear
Construction method
Buyer’s view
Buyer’s view
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Private/Public view construction – Logistics’ view
Logistics' private process consists of Purchase Order, Shipping List,
and Shipping Order artifacts
Notice NO Invoice artifact
Construction method
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Private ACC Model Construction
Integrate private view of each organization in the collaboration
Construction method
vbuyer + vsupplier+ vlogistics= vACC
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Public ACC Model Construction
Integrate public view of each organization in the collaboration
Construction method
p(vbuyer ) + p(vsupplier ) + p(vlogistics ) = p(vACC )
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Model verification
Traditional compositional model verification approach
can be used for the behavior verification of ACC model
(e.g., LIND-NIELSEN, J., Formal Methods in System Design 2001)
“soundness” guarantee the desired and correct
behavior of overall process
Local soundness vs. Global soundness
Local soundness soundness of individual private view
Global soundness soundness of ACC model
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Model verification
Artifact lifecycle and ACC lifecycle
1) Artifact lifecycle generated by interpreting BRs
2) ACC lifecycle generated by using compositional technique
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Model verification
Given two lifecycles, we can compose them into new
composed lifecycle
There inference rules for combined transition formation
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Model verification
Lifecycle of ACC is “sound” if it is:
safe
for every business rule r in ACC, r induces one and only one
transition
and goal-reachable
For every state s in ACC, there exists final state sf in ACC such that
s is reachable from the initial state and sfis reachable from s
For every final state sf in ACC, sfis reachable from the initial state
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Process changes
Changes can be made locally on the private view
Refinement Replace states or a transition of shared artifact
with new sub-lifecycle (called Lifecycle fragment or L-fragment)
Lifecycle refinement and synchronization refinement
Extension Add new local artifact(s) with the synchronization to
some existing artifact in the process
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Process changes
Examples of changes in process
Several possible
ways of
refinement with
extension
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Process changes
Issues?
How to guarantee valid changes the result of refinement/extension
preserves the global soundness of the collaboration
Compositional model verification
Unrealistic to access local artifacts owned by other organizations
Is expensive and leads to state exposition problem
We propose to validate the process locally but can assert
global soundness, i.e., Validating individual private view based on
local modification
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Process changes : Validation
Change Validation Framework “View conformance”
(covers)
conforms to
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Process changes : Validation
The modified private view must be behavioral-
consistent to its original private view
Consistency checking by lifecycle coverage checking
(a) is public view and (b), (c), and (d) are private views of (a) with
lifecycle modification
(a) is covered by (c) and (d), but not (b) (c) and (d) are consistent
to (a)
Notice this is observation consistency
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ACC Model : Validating changes
Key questions….
How to ensure that changes make a modified private view
consistent to its original view?
We need to guarantee that every change is valid by imposing
construction rules on both “refinement” and “extension”
Refinement consistency can adapt from SESE block checking in
programming language verification
Extension consistency By imposing refinement consistency checking
and consistent synchronization rules
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ACC Model : Validating changes
Synchronization consistency checking
Locally-bound lifecycle When an extended artifact totally syncs
within the refined SESE L-fragment
Transitivity Extended artifact syncs within another locally-bound
extended artifact
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ACC Model : Conclusion
Artifact-centric Collaboration model
Private/Public view construction
Model verification
Changes and validation
Valid change Modified private view consistent to its original private
view and conforms to the public ACC
Consistent “refinement” and “extension”
What’s this all about?
Organization is flexible and free to change and implement its own
part without revealing its private/sensitive information to other
organization while still preserving global correctness of the
collaboration
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Open Challenges
Realization approach?
On traditional “task-based” workflow system
Need model-model transformation, e.g., ArtiFlow BPEL (Narendra,
N.C., SCC 2009 and Liu, G., ICSOC 2009)
Pose loss of information and degrade flexibility (of business rules)
Inefficiency in Monitoring/Tracking due to model conversion/mapping
Alternative? Pure artifact-centric workflow system
Process driven by pure business rule engine (SOA supported)
Artifact-centric model can be directly (fully automated)
executed
Efficient-level of flexibility and monitoring ability
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Open Challenges
Our current developing work “A Framework for Automated
Realization of Artifact-centric Business Processes in SOA”
ACP Realization framework
ACP System architecture
To be appeared in the proceeding of DASFAA 2012To be appeared in the proceeding of DASFAA 2012
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Thank you
Editor's Notes
Swinburne University of Technology Swinburne University of Technology
Swinburne University of Technology Swinburne University of Technology
Swinburne University of Technology Swinburne University of Technology
Swinburne University of Technology Swinburne University of Technology
Swinburne University of Technology Swinburne University of Technology
Swinburne University of Technology Swinburne University of Technology
Swinburne University of Technology Swinburne University of Technology
Swinburne University of Technology Swinburne University of Technology
Swinburne University of Technology Swinburne University of Technology
Swinburne University of Technology Swinburne University of Technology
Swinburne University of Technology Swinburne University of Technology
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