TY - JOUR A1 - Bazhenova, Ekaterina A1 - Zerbato, Francesca A1 - Oliboni, Barbara A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - From BPMN process models to DMN decision models JF - Information systems N2 - The interplay between process and decision models plays a crucial role in business process management, as decisions may be based on running processes and affect process outcomes. Often process models include decisions that are encoded through process control flow structures and data flow elements, thus reducing process model maintainability. The Decision Model and Notation (DMN) was proposed to achieve separation of concerns and to possibly complement the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) for designing decisions related to process models. Nevertheless, deriving decision models from process models remains challenging, especially when the same data underlie both process and decision models. In this paper, we explore how and to which extent the data modeled in BPMN processes and used for decision-making may be represented in the corresponding DMN decision models. To this end, we identify a set of patterns that capture possible representations of data in BPMN processes and that can be used to guide the derivation of decision models related to existing process models. Throughout the paper we refer to real-world healthcare processes to show the applicability of the proposed approach. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Business process models KW - Decision models KW - BPMN KW - DMN KW - Pattern Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2019.02.001 SN - 0306-4379 SN - 1873-6076 VL - 83 SP - 69 EP - 88 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Combi, Carlo A1 - Oliboni, Barbara A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Zerbato, Francesca T1 - Seamless conceptual modeling of processes with transactional and analytical data JF - Data & knowledge engineering N2 - In the field of Business Process Management (BPM), modeling business processes and related data is a critical issue since process activities need to manage data stored in databases. The connection between processes and data is usually handled at the implementation level, even if modeling both processes and data at the conceptual level should help designers in improving business process models and identifying requirements for implementation. Especially in data -and decision-intensive contexts, business process activities need to access data stored both in databases and data warehouses. In this paper, we complete our approach for defining a novel conceptual view that bridges process activities and data. The proposed approach allows the designer to model the connection between business processes and database models and define the operations to perform, providing interesting insights on the overall connected perspective and hints for identifying activities that are crucial for decision support. KW - Conceptual modeling KW - Business process modeling KW - BPMN KW - Data modeling KW - Data warehouse KW - Decision support Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.datak.2021.101895 SN - 0169-023X SN - 1872-6933 VL - 134 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - THES A1 - Mandal, Sankalita T1 - Event handling in business processes T1 - Ereignisbehandlung in Geschäftsprozessen BT - flexible event subscription for business process enactment BT - flexibles Ereignisabonnement für die Durchführung von Geschäftsprozessen N2 - Business process management (BPM) deals with modeling, executing, monitoring, analyzing, and improving business processes. During execution, the process communicates with its environment to get relevant contextual information represented as events. Recent development of big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) enables sources like smart devices and sensors to generate tons of events which can be filtered, grouped, and composed to trigger and drive business processes. The industry standard Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) provides several event constructs to capture the interaction possibilities between a process and its environment, e.g., to instantiate a process, to abort an ongoing activity in an exceptional situation, to take decisions based on the information carried by the events, as well as to choose among the alternative paths for further process execution. The specifications of such interactions are termed as event handling. However, in a distributed setup, the event sources are most often unaware of the status of process execution and therefore, an event is produced irrespective of the process being ready to consume it. BPMN semantics does not support such scenarios and thus increases the chance of processes getting delayed or getting in a deadlock by missing out on event occurrences which might still be relevant. The work in this thesis reviews the challenges and shortcomings of integrating real-world events into business processes, especially the subscription management. The basic integration is achieved with an architecture consisting of a process modeler, a process engine, and an event processing platform. Further, points of subscription and unsubscription along the process execution timeline are defined for different BPMN event constructs. Semantic and temporal dependencies among event subscription, event occurrence, event consumption and event unsubscription are considered. To this end, an event buffer with policies for updating the buffer, retrieving the most suitable event for the current process instance, and reusing the event has been discussed that supports issuing of early subscription. The Petri net mapping of the event handling model provides our approach with a translation of semantics from a business process perspective. Two applications based on this formal foundation are presented to support the significance of different event handling configurations on correct process execution and reachability of a process path. Prototype implementations of the approaches show that realizing flexible event handling is feasible with minor extensions of off-the-shelf process engines and event platforms. N2 - Das Prozessmanagement befasst sich mit der Modellierung, Ausführung, Überwachung, Analyse und Verbesserung von Geschäftsprozessen. Während seiner Ausführung kommuniziert der Prozess mit seiner Umgebung, um relevante Kontextinformationen in Form von Ereignissen zu erhalten. Der jüngste Fortschritt im Bereich Big Data und dem Internet der Dinge ermöglicht Smart Devices und Sensoren eine Vielzahl von Ereignissen zu generieren, welche gefiltert, gruppiert und kombiniert werden können, um Geschäftsprozesse zu triggern und vor anzutreiben. Der Industriestandard Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) stellt mehrere Ereigniskonstrukte bereit, um die Interaktionsmöglichkeiten eines Prozesses mit seiner Umgebung zu erfassen. Beispielsweise können Prozesse durch Ereignisse gestartet, laufende Aktivitäten in Ausnahmefällen abgebrochen, Entscheidungen auf Basis der Ereignisinformationen getroffen, und alternative Ausführungspfade gewählt werden. Die Spezifikation solcher Interaktionen wird als Event Handling bezeichnet. Allerdings sind sich insbesondere in verteilten Systemen die Ereignisquellen des Zustands des Prozesses unbewusst. Daher werden Ereignisse unabhängig davon produziert, ob der Prozess bereit ist sie zu konsumieren. Die BPMN-Semantik sieht solche Situationen jedoch nicht vor, sodass die Möglichkeit besteht, dass das Auftreten von relevanten Ereignissen versäumt wird. Dies kann zu Verzögerungen oder gar Deadlocks in der Prozessauführung führen. Die vorliegende Dissertation untersucht die Mängel und Herausforderungen der Integration von Ereignissen und Geschäftsprozessen, insbesondere in Bezug auf das Subscription Management. Die grundlegende Integration wird durch eine Architektur erreicht, die aus einer Prozessmodellierungskomponente, einer Ausführungskomponente und einer Ereignisverarbeitungskomponente besteht. Ferner werden Points of Subscription and Unsubscription für verschiedene BPMN-Ereigniskonstrukte entlang der Zeitachse der Prozessausführung definiert. Semantische und temporale Abhängigkeiten zwischen der Subscription, dem Auftreten, dem Konsumieren und der Unsubscription eines Ereignisses werden betrachtet. In dieser Hinsicht wird ein Event Bufferdiskutiert, welcher mit Strategien zum Update des Puffers, zum Abruf der geeigneten Ereignisse für den laufenden Prozess, sowie zur Wiederverwendung von Ereignissen ausgestattet ist. Die Abbildung des Event Handling Modells in ein Petri-Netz versieht den beschriebenen Ansatz mit einer eindeutigen Semantik. Basierend auf diesem Formalismus werden zwei Anwendungen demonstriert, die die Relevanz verschiedener Konfigurationen des Event Handlings für eine korrekte Prozessausführung aufzeigen. Eine prototypische Implementierung des Ansatzes beweist dessen Umsetzbarkeit durch geringe Erweiterungen bestehender Software zur Prozessausführung und Ereignisverarbeitung. KW - business process managament KW - complex event processing KW - BPMN KW - event subscription KW - Geschäftsprozessmanagement KW - komplexe Ereignisverarbeitung KW - BPMN KW - Ereignisabonnement Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-441700 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Pufahl, Luise A1 - Wong, Tsun Yin A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Design of an extensible BPMN process simulator T2 - Business Process Management Workshops (BPM 2017) N2 - Business process simulation is an important means for quantitative analysis of a business process and to compare different process alternatives. With the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) being the state-of-the-art language for the graphical representation of business processes, many existing process simulators support already the simulation of BPMN diagrams. However, they do not provide well-defined interfaces to integrate new concepts in the simulation environment. In this work, we present the design and architecture of a proof-of-concept implementation of an open and extensible BPMN process simulator. It also supports the simulation of multiple BPMN processes at a time and relies on the building blocks of the well-founded discrete event simulation. The extensibility is assured by a plug-in concept. Its feasibility is demonstrated by extensions supporting new BPMN concepts, such as the simulation of business rule activities referencing decision models and batch activities. KW - Business process simulation KW - Extensibility KW - BPMN Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-3-319-74030-0 SN - 978-3-319-74029-4 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74030-0_62 SN - 1865-1348 VL - 308 SP - 782 EP - 795 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ER -