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 - Meyer, Andreas A1 - Pufahl, Luise A1 - Batoulis, Kimon A1 - Fahland, Dirk A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Automating data exchange in process choreographies JF - Information systems N2 - Communication between organizations is formalized as process choreographies in daily business. While the correct ordering of exchanged messages can be modeled and enacted with current choreography techniques, no approach exists to describe and automate the exchange of data between processes in a choreography using messages. This paper describes an entirely model-driven approach for BPMN introducing a few concepts that suffice to model data retrieval, data transformation, message exchange, and correlation four aspects of data exchange. For automation, this work utilizes a recent concept to enact data dependencies in internal processes. We present a modeling guideline to derive local process models from a given choreography; their operational semantics allows to correctly enact the entire choreography from the derived models only including the exchange of data. Targeting on successful interactions, we discuss means to ensure correct process choreography modeling. Finally, we implemented our approach by extending the camunda BPM platform with our approach and show its feasibility by realizing all service interaction patterns using only model-based concepts. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Process modeling KW - Data modeling KW - Process choreographies KW - Data exchange KW - BPMN KW - SQL Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2015.03.008 SN - 0306-4379 SN - 1873-6076 VL - 53 SP - 296 EP - 329 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mendling, Jan A1 - Weber, Ingo A1 - van der Aalst, Wil A1 - Brocke, Jan Vom A1 - Cabanillas, Cristina A1 - Daniel, Florian A1 - Debois, Soren A1 - Di Ciccio, Claudio A1 - Dumas, Marlon A1 - Dustdar, Schahram A1 - Gal, Avigdor A1 - Garcia-Banuelos, Luciano A1 - Governatori, Guido A1 - Hull, Richard A1 - La Rosa, Marcello A1 - Leopold, Henrik A1 - Leymann, Frank A1 - Recker, Jan A1 - Reichert, Manfred A1 - Reijers, Hajo A. A1 - Rinderle-Ma, Stefanie A1 - Solti, Andreas A1 - Rosemann, Michael A1 - Schulte, Stefan A1 - Singh, Munindar P. A1 - Slaats, Tijs A1 - Staples, Mark A1 - Weber, Barbara A1 - Weidlich, Matthias A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Xu, Xiwei A1 - Zhu, Liming T1 - Blockchains for Business Process Management BT - Challenges and Opportunities JF - ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems N2 - Blockchain technology offers a sizable promise to rethink the way interorganizational business processes are managed because of its potential to realize execution without a central party serving as a single point of trust (and failure). To stimulate research on this promise and the limits thereof, in this article, we outline the challenges and opportunities of blockchain for business process management (BPM). We first reflect how blockchains could be used in the context of the established BPM lifecycle and second how they might become relevant beyond. We conclude our discourse with a summary of seven research directions for investigating the application of blockchain technology in the context of BPM. KW - Blockchain KW - business process management KW - research challenges Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1145/3183367 SN - 2158-656X SN - 2158-6578 VL - 9 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 16 PB - Association for Computing Machinery CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Luebbe, Alexander A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Determining the effect of tangible business process modeling Y1 - 2012 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Luebbe, Alexander A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Bringing design thinking to business process modeling Y1 - 2011 SN - 978-3-642-13756-3 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 - BOOK A1 - Kunze, Matthias A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Behavioural Models BT - From Modelling Finite Automata to Analysing Business Processes N2 - This textbook introduces the basis for modelling and analysing discrete dynamic systems, such as computer programmes, soft- and hardware systems, and business processes. The underlying concepts are introduced and concrete modelling techniques are described, such as finite automata, state machines, and Petri nets. The concepts are related to concrete application scenarios, among which business processes play a prominent role. The book consists of three parts, the first of which addresses the foundations of behavioural modelling. After a general introduction to modelling, it introduces transition systems as a basic formalism for representing the behaviour of discrete dynamic systems. This section also discusses causality, a fundamental concept for modelling and reasoning about behaviour. In turn, Part II forms the heart of the book and is devoted to models of behaviour. It details both sequential and concurrent systems and introduces finite automata, state machines and several different types of Petri nets. One chapter is especially devoted to business process models, workflow patterns and BPMN, the industry standard for modelling business processes. Lastly, Part III investigates how the behaviour of systems can be analysed. To this end, it introduces readers to the concept of state spaces. Further chapters cover the comparison of behaviour and the formal analysis and verification of behavioural models. The book was written for students of computer science and software engineering, as well as for programmers and system analysts interested in the behaviour of the systems they work on. It takes readers on a journey from the fundamentals of behavioural modelling to advanced techniques for modelling and analysing sequential and concurrent systems, and thus provides them a deep understanding of the concepts and techniques introduced and how they can be applied to concrete application scenarios. Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-3-319-44958-6 PB - Springer CY - Cham ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kunze, Matthias A1 - Weidlich, Matthias A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Querying process models by behavior inclusion JF - Software and systems modeling N2 - Business processes are vital to managing organizations as they sustain a company's competitiveness. Consequently, these organizations maintain collections of hundreds or thousands of process models for streamlining working procedures and facilitating process implementation. Yet, the management of large process model collections requires effective searching capabilities. Recent research focused on similarity search of process models, but querying process models is still a largely open topic. This article presents an approach to querying process models that takes a process example as input and discovers all models that allow replaying the behavior of the query. To this end, we provide a notion of behavioral inclusion that is based on trace semantics and abstraction. Additional to deciding a match, a closeness score is provided that describes how well the behavior of the query is represented in the model and can be used for ranking. The article introduces the formal foundations of the approach and shows how they are applied to querying large process model collections. An experimental evaluation has been conducted that confirms the suitability of the solution as well as its applicability and scalability in practice. KW - Process model search KW - Behavioral querying KW - Trace inclusion KW - Process model repositories Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-013-0389-6 SN - 1619-1366 SN - 1619-1374 VL - 14 IS - 3 SP - 1105 EP - 1125 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg 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 - TY - JOUR A1 - Herzberg, Nico A1 - Meyer, Andreas A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Improving business process intelligence by observing object state transitions JF - Data & knowledge engineering N2 - During the execution of business processes several events happen that are recorded in the company's information systems. These events deliver insights into process executions so that process monitoring and analysis can be performed resulting, for instance, in prediction of upcoming process steps or the analysis of the run time of single steps. While event capturing is trivial when a process engine with integrated logging capabilities is used, manual process execution environments do not provide automatic logging of events, so that typically external devices, like bar code scanners, have to be used. As experience shows, these manual steps are error-prone and induce additional work. Therefore, we use object state transitions as additional monitoring information, so-called object state transition events. Based on these object state transition events, we reason about the enablement and termination of activities and provide the basis for process monitoring and analysis in terms of a large event log. In this paper, we present the concept to utilize information from these object state transition events for capturing process progress. Furthermore, we discuss a methodology to create the required design time artifacts that then are used for monitoring at run time. In a proof-of-concept implementation, we show how the design time and run time side work and prove applicability of the introduced concept of object state transition events. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. KW - Business process management KW - Events KW - Data KW - Process Monitoring KW - BPMN Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.datak.2015.07.008 SN - 0169-023X SN - 1872-6933 VL - 98 SP - 144 EP - 164 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER -