TY - GEN A1 - Ladleif, Jan A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Which Event Happened First? Deferred Choice on Blockchain Using Oracles T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Reihe der Digital Engineering Fakultät N2 - First come, first served: Critical choices between alternative actions are often made based on events external to an organization, and reacting promptly to their occurrence can be a major advantage over the competition. In Business Process Management (BPM), such deferred choices can be expressed in process models, and they are an important aspect of process engines. Blockchain-based process execution approaches are no exception to this, but are severely limited by the inherent properties of the platform: The isolated environment prevents direct access to external entities and data, and the non-continual runtime based entirely on atomic transactions impedes the monitoring and detection of events. In this paper we provide an in-depth examination of the semantics of deferred choice, and transfer them to environments such as the blockchain. We introduce and compare several oracle architectures able to satisfy certain requirements, and show that they can be implemented using state-of-the-art blockchain technology. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Reihe der Digital Engineering Fakultät - 11 KW - business processes KW - business process management KW - deferred choice KW - workflow patterns KW - blockchain KW - smart contracts KW - oracles KW - formal semantics Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-550681 VL - 4 SP - 1 EP - 16 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ladleif, Jan A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Which event happened first? BT - Deferred choice on blockchain using oracles JF - Frontiers in blockchain N2 - First come, first served: Critical choices between alternative actions are often made based on events external to an organization, and reacting promptly to their occurrence can be a major advantage over the competition. In Business Process Management (BPM), such deferred choices can be expressed in process models, and they are an important aspect of process engines. Blockchain-based process execution approaches are no exception to this, but are severely limited by the inherent properties of the platform: The isolated environment prevents direct access to external entities and data, and the non-continual runtime based entirely on atomic transactions impedes the monitoring and detection of events. In this paper we provide an in-depth examination of the semantics of deferred choice, and transfer them to environments such as the blockchain. We introduce and compare several oracle architectures able to satisfy certain requirements, and show that they can be implemented using state-of-the-art blockchain technology. KW - business processes KW - business process management KW - deferred choice KW - workflow patterns KW - blockchain KW - smart contracts KW - oracles KW - formal semantics Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fbloc.2021.758169 SN - 2624-7852 VL - 4 SP - 1 EP - 16 PB - Frontiers in Blockchain CY - Lausanne, Schweiz ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yousfi, Alaaeddine A1 - Hewelt, Marcin A1 - Bauer, Christine A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Toward uBPMN-Based patterns for modeling ubiquitous business processes JF - IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics N2 - Ubiquitous business processes are the new generation of processes that pervade the physical space and interact with their environments using a minimum of human involvement. Although they are now widely deployed in the industry, their deployment is still ad hoc . They are implemented after an arbitrary modeling phase or no modeling phase at all. The absence of a solid modeling phase backing up the implementation generates many loopholes that are stressed in the literature. Here, we tackle the issue of modeling ubiquitous business processes. We propose patterns to represent the recent ubiquitous computing features. These patterns are the outcome of an analysis we conducted in the field of human-computer interaction to examine how the features are actually deployed. The patterns' understandability, ease-of-use, usefulness, and completeness are examined via a user experiment. The results indicate that these four indexes are on the positive track. Hence, the patterns may be the backbone of ubiquitous business process modeling in industrial applications. KW - Ubiquitous business process KW - ubiquitous business process model and notation (uBPMN) KW - ubiquitous business process modeling KW - ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/TII.2017.2777847 SN - 1551-3203 SN - 1941-0050 VL - 14 IS - 8 SP - 3358 EP - 3367 PB - Inst. of Electr. and Electronics Engineers CY - Piscataway ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nikaj, Adriatik A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Mendling, Jan T1 - Semi-automatic derivation of RESTful choreographies from business process choreographies JF - Software and systems modeling N2 - Enterprises reach out for collaborations with other organizations in order to offer complex products and services to the market. Such collaboration and coordination between different organizations, for a good share, is facilitated by information technology. The BPMN process choreography is a modeling language for specifying the exchange of information and services between different organizations at the business level. Recently, there is a surging use of the REST architectural style for the provisioning of services on the web, but few systematic engineering approach to design their collaboration. In this paper, we address this gap in a comprehensive way by defining a semi-automatic method for the derivation of RESTful choreographies from process choreographies. The method is based on natural language analysis techniques to derive interactions from the textual information in process choreographies. The proposed method is evaluated in terms of effectiveness resulting in the intervention of a web engineer in only about 10% of all generated RESTful interactions. KW - Business process choreographies KW - RESTful choreographies KW - Natural language analysis Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-017-0653-2 SN - 1619-1366 SN - 1619-1374 VL - 18 IS - 2 SP - 1195 EP - 1208 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg 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 - BOOK A1 - Meinel, Christoph A1 - Döllner, Jürgen Roland Friedrich A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Polze, Andreas A1 - Hirschfeld, Robert A1 - Naumann, Felix A1 - Giese, Holger A1 - Baudisch, Patrick A1 - Friedrich, Tobias A1 - Böttinger, Erwin A1 - Lippert, Christoph A1 - Dörr, Christian A1 - Lehmann, Anja A1 - Renard, Bernhard A1 - Rabl, Tilmann A1 - Uebernickel, Falk A1 - Arnrich, Bert A1 - Hölzle, Katharina T1 - Proceedings of the HPI Research School on Service-oriented Systems Engineering 2020 Fall Retreat N2 - Design and Implementation of service-oriented architectures imposes a huge number of research questions from the fields of software engineering, system analysis and modeling, adaptability, and application integration. Component orientation and web services are two approaches for design and realization of complex web-based system. Both approaches allow for dynamic application adaptation as well as integration of enterprise application. Service-Oriented Systems Engineering represents a symbiosis of best practices in object-orientation, component-based development, distributed computing, and business process management. It provides integration of business and IT concerns. The annual Ph.D. Retreat of the Research School provides each member the opportunity to present his/her current state of their research and to give an outline of a prospective Ph.D. thesis. Due to the interdisciplinary structure of the research school, this technical report covers a wide range of topics. These include but are not limited to: Human Computer Interaction and Computer Vision as Service; Service-oriented Geovisualization Systems; Algorithm Engineering for Service-oriented Systems; Modeling and Verification of Self-adaptive Service-oriented Systems; Tools and Methods for Software Engineering in Service-oriented Systems; Security Engineering of Service-based IT Systems; Service-oriented Information Systems; Evolutionary Transition of Enterprise Applications to Service Orientation; Operating System Abstractions for Service-oriented Computing; and Services Specification, Composition, and Enactment. N2 - Der Entwurf und die Realisierung dienstbasierender Architekturen wirft eine Vielzahl von Forschungsfragestellungen aus den Gebieten der Softwaretechnik, der Systemmodellierung und -analyse, sowie der Adaptierbarkeit und Integration von Applikationen auf. Komponentenorientierung und WebServices sind zwei Ansätze für den effizienten Entwurf und die Realisierung komplexer Web-basierender Systeme. Sie ermöglichen die Reaktion auf wechselnde Anforderungen ebenso, wie die Integration großer komplexer Softwaresysteme. "Service-Oriented Systems Engineering" repräsentiert die Symbiose bewährter Praktiken aus den Gebieten der Objektorientierung, der Komponentenprogrammierung, des verteilten Rechnen sowie der Geschäftsprozesse und berücksichtigt auch die Integration von Geschäftsanliegen und Informationstechnologien. Die Klausurtagung des Forschungskollegs "Service-oriented Systems Engineering" findet einmal jährlich statt und bietet allen Kollegiaten die Möglichkeit den Stand ihrer aktuellen Forschung darzulegen. Bedingt durch die Querschnittstruktur des Kollegs deckt dieser Bericht ein weites Spektrum aktueller Forschungsthemen ab. Dazu zählen unter anderem Human Computer Interaction and Computer Vision as Service; Service-oriented Geovisualization Systems; Algorithm Engineering for Service-oriented Systems; Modeling and Verification of Self-adaptive Service-oriented Systems; Tools and Methods for Software Engineering in Service-oriented Systems; Security Engineering of Service-based IT Systems; Service-oriented Information Systems; Evolutionary Transition of Enterprise Applications to Service Orientation; Operating System Abstractions for Service-oriented Computing; sowie Services Specification, Composition, and Enactment. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 138 KW - Hasso Plattner Institute KW - research school KW - Ph.D. retreat KW - service-oriented systems engineering KW - Hasso-Plattner-Institut KW - Forschungskolleg KW - Klausurtagung KW - Service-oriented Systems Engineering Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-504132 SN - 978-3-86956-513-2 SN - 1613-5652 SN - 2191-1665 IS - 138 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - 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 - GEN A1 - Haarmann, Stephan A1 - Batoulis, Kimon A1 - Nikaj, Adriatik A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - DMN Decision Execution on the Ethereum Blockchain T2 - Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAISE 2018 N2 - Recently blockchain technology has been introduced to execute interacting business processes in a secure and transparent way. While the foundations for process enactment on blockchain have been researched, the execution of decisions on blockchain has not been addressed yet. In this paper we argue that decisions are an essential aspect of interacting business processes, and, therefore, also need to be executed on blockchain. The immutable representation of decision logic can be used by the interacting processes, so that decision taking will be more secure, more transparent, and better auditable. The approach is based on a mapping of the DMN language S-FEEL to Solidity code to be run on the Ethereum blockchain. The work is evaluated by a proof-of-concept prototype and an empirical cost evaluation. KW - Blockchain KW - Interacting processes KW - DMN Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-3-319-91563-0 SN - 978-3-319-91562-3 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91563-0_20 SN - 0302-9743 SN - 1611-3349 VL - 10816 SP - 327 EP - 341 PB - Springer CY - Cham 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 - TY - GEN A1 - Bazhenova, Ekaterina A1 - Zerbato, Francesca A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Data-Centric Extraction of DMN Decision Models from BPMN Process Models T2 - Business Process Management Workshops N2 - Operational decisions in business processes can be modeled by using the Decision Model and Notation (DMN). The complementary use of DMN for decision modeling and of the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) for process design realizes the separation of concerns principle. For supporting separation of concerns during the design phase, it is crucial to understand which aspects of decision-making enclosed in a process model should be captured by a dedicated decision model. Whereas existing work focuses on the extraction of decision models from process control flow, the connection of process-related data and decision models is still unexplored. In this paper, we investigate how process-related data used for making decisions can be represented in process models and we distinguish a set of BPMN patterns capturing such information. Then, we provide a formal mapping of the identified BPMN patterns to corresponding DMN models and apply our approach to a real-world healthcare process. KW - Business process models KW - Process-related data KW - Decision models 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_43 SN - 1865-1348 VL - 308 SP - 542 EP - 555 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ER - TY - GEN A1 - Combi, Carlo A1 - Oliboni, Barbara A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Zerbato, Francesca ED - Trujillo, JC Davis T1 - Conceptual modeling of processes and data BT - Connecting different perspectives T2 - Conceptual Modeling, ER 2018 N2 - Business processes constantly generate, manipulate, and consume data that are managed by organizational databases. Despite being central to process modeling and execution, the link between processes and data is often handled by developers when the process is implemented, thus leaving the connection unexplored during the conceptual design. In this paper, we introduce, formalize, and evaluate a novel conceptual view that bridges the gap between process and data models, and show some kinds of interesting insights that can be derived from this novel proposal. Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-3-030-00847-5 SN - 978-3-030-00846-8 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00847-5_18 SN - 0302-9743 SN - 1611-3349 VL - 11157 SP - 236 EP - 250 PB - Springer CY - Cham ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pufahl, Luise A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Batch activity: enhancing business process modeling and enactment with batch processing JF - Computing N2 - Organizations strive for efficiency in their business processes by process improvement and automation. Business process management (BPM) supports these efforts by capturing business processes in process models serving as blueprint for a number of process instances. In BPM, process instances are typically considered running independently of each other. However, batch processing-the collectively execution of several instances at specific process activities-is a common phenomenon in operational processes to reduce cost or time. Currently, batch processing is organized manually or hard-coded in software. For allowing stakeholders to explicitly represent their batch configurations in process models and their automatic execution, this paper provides a concept for batch activities and describes the corresponding execution semantics. The batch activity concept is evaluated in a two-step approach: a prototypical implementation in an existing BPM System proves its feasibility. Additionally, batch activities are applied to different use cases in a simulated environment. Its application implies cost-savings when a suitable batch configuration is selected. The batch activity concept contributes to practice by allowing the specification of batch work in process models and their automatic execution, and to research by extending the existing process modeling concepts. KW - Batch activity KW - Batch processing KW - Business process models KW - Process Enactment KW - Colored Petri Net Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-019-00717-4 SN - 0010-485X SN - 1436-5057 VL - 101 IS - 12 SP - 1909 EP - 1933 PB - Springer CY - Wien ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yousfi, Alaaeddine A1 - Batoulis, Kimon A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Achieving Business Process Improvement via Ubiquitous Decision-Aware Business Processes JF - ACM Transactions on Internet Technology N2 - Business process improvement is an endless challenge for many organizations. As long as there is a process, it must he improved. Nowadays, improvement initiatives are driven by professionals. This is no longer practical because people cannot perceive the enormous data of current business environments. Here, we introduce ubiquitous decision-aware business processes. They pervade the physical space, analyze the ever-changing environments, and make decisions accordingly. We explain how they can be built and used for improvement. Our approach can be a valuable improvement option to alleviate the workload of participants by helping focus on the crucial rather than the menial tasks. KW - Business process improvement KW - ubiquitous decision-aware business process KW - ubiquitous decisions KW - context KW - uBPMN KW - DMN Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1145/3298986 SN - 1533-5399 SN - 1557-6051 VL - 19 IS - 1 PB - Association for Computing Machinery CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ihde, Sven A1 - Pufahl, Luise A1 - Völker, Maximilian A1 - Goel, Asvin A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - A framework for modeling and executing task BT - specific resource allocations in business processes JF - Computing : archives for informatics and numerical computation N2 - As resources are valuable assets, organizations have to decide which resources to allocate to business process tasks in a way that the process is executed not only effectively but also efficiently. Traditional role-based resource allocation leads to effective process executions, since each task is performed by a resource that has the required skills and competencies to do so. However, the resulting allocations are typically not as efficient as they could be, since optimization techniques have yet to find their way in traditional business process management scenarios. On the other hand, operations research provides a rich set of analytical methods for supporting problem-specific decisions on resource allocation. This paper provides a novel framework for creating transparency on existing tasks and resources, supporting individualized allocations for each activity in a process, and the possibility to integrate problem-specific analytical methods of the operations research domain. To validate the framework, the paper reports on the design and prototypical implementation of a software architecture, which extends a traditional process engine with a dedicated resource management component. This component allows us to define specific resource allocation problems at design time, and it also facilitates optimized resource allocation at run time. The framework is evaluated using a real-world parcel delivery process. The evaluation shows that the quality of the allocation results increase significantly with a technique from operations research in contrast to the traditional applied rule-based approach. KW - Process Execution KW - Business Process Management KW - Resource Allocation KW - Resource Management KW - Activity-oriented Optimization Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-022-01093-2 SN - 0010-485X SN - 1436-5057 VL - 104 SP - 2405 EP - 2429 PB - Springer CY - Wien ER -