Business Process Modeling, Management and Mining
Business Process Automation
Prof. Cesare Pautasso
http://www.pautasso.info
[email protected]
@pautasso
Business -- IT Gap
“to-be” process models
- modeled by domain experts
- communicate, prescribe, illustrate
- shared understanding between participants
- intuitive, abstract, ambiguous, need some interpretation
Executable process models
- modeled by IT experts
- input to a process engine
- formal executable semantics
- explicit, concrete, precise and full of implementation details
Automation Goals
Repeatable Processes: processes are executed in the same way, tasks may be manual
Straight through processing: full process and task automation, high throughput
Overview
Reference Architecture
Workflow Management Coalition, 1998
Two-level Programming
- Programming in the large
- Process logic defines the integration of reusable components (control and data flow)
- Assembly by domain experts (non-programmers)
-
Programming in the small
- Component logic implements discrete fine-grained functions and tasks (interfaces)
- Components developed by IT experts (programmers)
SOA = BPM + WS
R. Peisl
Layers and Integration
APIs are used to access software functionality exposed to be integrated from processes
If APIs are not available, it is always possible to access a system from its user interface, or go directly to its data
Choreography
Each participant follows his own process when interacting directly with the other software systems involved in the choreography
Orchestration
The process defines the behavior of a centralized coordinator, which will drive the interaction between all integrated software systems
Composition
The process defines the behavior of a component that is (recursively) built out of the composition of other components, which remain hidden from the client
Megaprogramming
With a process, every instruction:
- Can dynamically select, bind and execute a different external software system
- Can timeout and be aborted if it doesn't complete within a deadline
- Can be part of a distributed atomic transaction
- Is logged persistently so that its execution state can be recovered and monitored
- Can be suspended, resumed, canceled or retried by the user
Process-aware Software
Process-aware Software
- Worklist Handler - the user interface for notifying users about new tasks to be executed and for notifying the engine that users have completed their tasks
- Embedded Software Activities small-grained functions that are embedded efficiently into the process execution thread (e.g., automated decision rules, data conversion operators)
- Remote, Standard Software invoked through a standardized protocol (HTTP, WS-* SOAP)
- Remote, Non-Standard Sofware requires the development of custom adapters before it can be invoked from the process engine
Software Connectors
Connectors and Processes
Internal Engine Architecture
Correlation
Problem: Route incoming messages to the corresponding existing process instance or start a new process to process an incoming message
Solution: Embed process identifier into message headers
Alternative Solution: Use message properties and content to identify the process instance
Process Identification
- Package
- Process Name
- Version
- Instance Counter
- Replica
Structured process instance identifiers allows to group related instances and find which process template they execute
How long does it take?
Hentrich and Zdun
Macroflow long-running business processes (days, months, years) which may include human tasks
Microflow short-lived transactional processes (microseconds, seconds, minutes) that involve fully automated tasks
Types of Process Engines
- Process Representation:Generic (Explicit) vs. Hard-Coded (Implicit)
- Process Modeling Language:Standard (BPMN, WS-BPEL) vs. Custom
- Deployment:Standalone vs. Embedded
Commercial Engines
- IBM WebSphere Process Server
- Oracle BPMS
- Microsoft BizTalk, Windows Workflow Foundation
- SAP NetWeaver BPM
- Software AG webMethods
- Appian BPMS
- BizAgi BPM Suite
- Bosch inubit Suite
- OpenTex tBPM
- Perceptive BPMONe
- Progress Savvion
- TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM
- Whitestein Living Systems Process Suite
Open Source Engines
- Activiti
- Camunda
- Stardust
- Apache ODE
- Bonita
- Intalio BPM
- JBoss jBPM
- YAWL
- JOpera
References
- Marlon Dumas, Marcello La Rosa, Jan Mendling, Hajo Reijers, Fundamentals of Business Process Management, Chapter 5, Springer, 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-33142-8
- Gustavo Alonso, Fabio Casati, Harumi Kuno, Vijay Machiraju, Web Services: Concepts, Architecture and Applications, Springer 2004
- Carsten Hentrich, Uwe Zdun, Patterns for Process-Oriented Integration in Service-Oriented Architectures, EPLOP 2006
- Gio Wiederhold, Peter Wegner, Stefano Ceri, Toward Megaprogramming, CACM 35(11):89-99, November 1992
- Frank DeRemer, Hans Kron, Programming-in-the large versus programming-in-the-small, Proceedings of the international conference on Reliable software, p. 114-221, 1975