=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Actionable Meta Models to Support Inter Organizational Business Processes Modeling for e-Services
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-601/EOMAS10_paper7.pdf
|volume=Vol-601
}}
==Actionable Meta Models to Support Inter Organizational Business Processes Modeling for e-Services==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-601/EOMAS10_paper7.pdf
Actionable Meta Models to Support Inter Organizational
Business Processes Modeling for e-Services
P. Radha Krishna1 and Murali Mohan Narasipuram2, *
1
SET Labs, Infosys Technologies Limited, Hyderabad, India.
2
Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong,
83 Tat Chee Avenue, Hong Kong.
radhakrishna_p@infosys.com, ismohan@cityu.edu.hk
Abstract. E-services usually span multiple organizations and evolve in time-domain
due to the changes in the environment pertaining to each organization. Enacting
composite e-services over evolving inter-organizational business processes is a
challenging task. In this paper, we highlight modeling of business processes for e-
services and present enactment of the e-services with the help of meta models in
order to cope with the changing needs. We also describe high-level framework to
enact e-services through actionable meta models.
Keywords: Meta models, Business process modeling, Run-time environment
1 Introduction
Modeling e-services is an important task in business processes specifications and
execution. A single model may not be enough to design e-services when it spans multiple
organizations. At the same time, it is hard to describe a generic model for any kind of e-
services. This necessitates an abstract level of modeling, that is meta-modeling, which
helps in instantiating context-specific model instances to suit the needs of e-services. It
also provides required facilities to support functionality for adapting the model to new
requirements.
In the domain of business process modeling, meta-models take a leadership role in
defining how the data and corresponding application/business logic is handled right from
the modeling to all the way to enactment of business processes. E-services involve inter-
organizational business processes. Enactment of such business processes involves multiple
parties and is modeled, using workflows by introducing e-services in business process
models [1].
*
currently visiting International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH), INDIA
J. Barjis, M.M. Narasipuram, G. Rabadi, J. Ralyté, and P. Plebani (Eds.):
CAiSE 2010 Workshop EOMAS’10, Hammamet, Tunisia, pp. 77-83, 2010.
78 P.R. Krishna and M.M. Narasipuram
e-Service
Inter-organizational Business Processes Layer
Organization A Organization B Organization C
Information
Task a3 Layer
Task a1 Task c1 Task c3
Task b1
Task b2 Task c2
Task a2 Task a4
Database
Layer
Database 1 Database 2 Database N
Fig. 1. An example scenario of inter-organizational business processes
Figure 1 shows a layered diagram to illustrate an example of e-services involving
multiple organizations. The top layer is concerned to e-service layer, where an e-service
spans multiple business organizations and carried out using inter-organizational business
processes. The middle layer is information layer, which outlines information about the
tasks of each organization and the e-service will involve some or all of these tasks. The
bottom layer is a database layer where all the data pertaining to respective organizations
are stored for further processing. Consider an example scenario where a particular e-
service may need task a1, task a4, task b2 and task c1. So there is a need for collaborative
business processes from different organizations. Web service applications integrate inter-
organizational and heterogeneous services on the Web. Due to the changes in
application/business logics at run-time, Web services are created and updated
dynamically.
Several researchers have developed meta-model for different domains. Karagiannis
and Höfferer [5] presented a survey on meta-models and developed taxonomy for
classifying application scenarios of meta modeling according to domain, design, and
integration. In [2], a formalism-independent meta-model is described to model a business
process and presented the interactions among the different aspects in order to capture the
dynamic behaviour of a business process model. The EREC meta-model proposed in [6] is
useful to instantiate appropriate data model for electronic contracts. Chiu et al., [3]
presented a meta-model approach to develop web services based e-Negotiation
Inter Organizational Business Processes Modeling for e-Services 79
framework. Rosemann and Muehlen [7] presented a meta model approach to evaluate and
compare different workflow management systems. They used extended entity relationship
models to design the meta data models and provided a generic organizational reference
meta model for enacting inter-organizational workflows. Design of all these meta models
are specific to an application and assumes complete specifications of it is known in
advance.
In this work, we consider services as workflows and present how meta-models are
useful to facilitate the changes in specifications during run-time.
Actionable meta modeling enables upkeep of meta model and the corresponding
mapping all the way to run-time caused by the changes in organizational environment at
run time, or sometimes changes initiated by users due to external factors. The main feature
of this framework is that it facilitates to systematically address the problem of proactively
responding to changes driven from environment.
System Design System in Execution
(Run-time Environment)
E-service Business logic Business logic
Reconciliation
Data & Process Modeling Log records
Workflows Workflow instances
Fig. 2 Reconciliation of Meta Model with Run-Time Environment
Changes
During e-service system design, the requirements are collected and the e-service
elements such as activities and payments are extracted to model an e-service. Workflows
will be identified to execute the e-service activities carried out by organizations. The log
records keep track of the e-service execution. However, changes in organizational
environment during e-service enactment need modification at conceptual level as well as
at logical level. In order to propagate changes that occur during enactment to conceptual
and logical level, there is a need to obtain business logic from log records and should be
reconciled with the actual business logic of the e-service (Fig. 2).
In the next section, we present the framework for enactment of e-services for evolving
inter-organizational business processes.
80 P.R. Krishna and M.M. Narasipuram
2 Architecture for Actionable Meta-modeling
E-service execution requires the modification of model schema definitions and in-turn
changes in workflow instances, as a remedy. Moreover, additional constructs are needed
in the system during work in progress. The present approach offers a practical solution
from modeling and enactment of e-services, driven by meta-models. We maintain business
policies that refer to adaptable instances of workflow schema while the service is being
executed. Workflow patterns [4, 8] are useful to describe how the changes will be
specified, implemented and perceived in e-services.
Figure 3 shows architecture of a system to model business processes and its instances.
Web Service Server provides the services and transport of inter-organizational
communications among business partners involved in the service. The Run-time
environment (RTE) details such as workflows, rules, etc. are maintained in the database.
Dynamic Workflow Instance Generation (DWIG) generates workflows on-the-fly and
rules. It also allows the administrators to customize and edit them. Workflow definitions
created or specified are executed by the Meta-workflow Driven Workflow execution
engine. That is, the workflow engine enacts the workflows specified by the dynamic
workflow instance Generation. The Event handler manages the events occurring during
the execution of workflows. It handles events in a unified manner for both normal and
exception parts of a business process workflow. The Event-Condition-Action (ECA) Rule
Manager initiates appropriate ECA rules based on the input from Event Handler. It also
keeps track of generated rules with their corresponding actions and allows users to define
additional rules if necessary.
The workflow engine and the ECA rule manager works in a synchronized manner.
Thus, the ECA rules control the workflow execution and the events that occur during the
workflow execution result in appropriate actions. The changes in the design-time update
the corresponding database. The Knowledge Base maintains the currency of information
such as application policies, versions, new requirements etc. that governs execution of the
workflow. It also stores the vocabulary of an e-service domain. Knowledge Base captures
the updates that take place in the run-time as well as in the design-time. These updates, in
turn, become input to the Run-time Business Processes evaluator (RTBPE), which
generates candidate meta-model(s) and add/modify the meta-model repository. Meta-
Model repository contains the meta-models that are specific to a service under
consideration. Meta-models are added or modified based on the requirements collected
from run-time environment changes as well as design-time changes.
Business Processes logic and events are captured by execution support of meta-
models. Control and Monitoring Unit (CMU) generates/modifies the workflow patterns
and also specific elements namely Events, States, Processes and Rules (ESPR) in order to
keep track of changes and their progression with respect to business processes under
consideration. CMU receives events and results from the run-time environment and
service specific components and policies. The modeling of changes during service
Inter Organizational Business Processes Modeling for e-Services 81
Business Parties
Public UDDI Register Web Service Server
Run Time Business
Processes Evaluator Meta-Model Learning
Meta-Models Repository
Events,
Workflow States,
Patterns Processes
and Rules
Meta-Model
Selector
Dynamic Workflow (s)
Control and
Monitoring Unit Run Time Environment
Meta-Model Dynamic Workflow
driven Instance
Workflow Generation
Execution
Service Specific
Components
Knowledge
Event Handler
Base
Database
for workflows, Rules,
Business Policies etc.
ECA Rule Manager
Fig. 3. Architecture for actionable meta-modeling to support evolving businesses processes
enactment can be seen as a different kind of meta-processes (tasks). Further, Service
Specific Components are required for encapsulation and realization of the domain-specific
logic for the service. The three components namely CMU, workflow patterns and ESPR
will serve as RTBPE. Meta-model selector selects the appropriate meta-model(s) from the
meta-model repository, which in turn drives the dynamic workflows to carry out business
processes execution according to the changed context.
82 P.R. Krishna and M.M. Narasipuram
3 Discussion on the Proposed Meta-modeling Architecture
Proposed architecture facilitates learning from Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) to
feed into the meta model updates. In the current Business Process Management domain,
there is a lack of suitable architectures for BAM to support learning. The RTBPE
proposed in this architecture provides the BAM metrics and their respective evaluations.
These evaluations are the primary drivers for the learning required to update the meta
models. The meta model learning is fed back into RTE through the dynamic work flow
link with meta model repository. The benefits derivable from the proposed architecture
depend on the e-service BAM design in terms of the RTBPE. Another advantage is that
the dynamic workflow link between the meta model repository and RTE makes this
architecture actionable.
Further work is needed to enhance the proposed architecture by explicitly specifying
the service design issues such as granularity, complexity, flexibility, interoperability,
autonomy, contract specifications, etc. in the RTBPE. Such enhancements will help the
Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) software developers to bench mark their
products and the BPMS users to assess and evaluate the BPMS products in a more
comprehensive manner.
4 Conclusion
Modeling of e-services facilitates effective specification and execution of business
processes. In the case of inter-organizational business processes, development of a generic
model is a complex task. In this paper, we presented a meta modeling approach which
helps to create context based model instances according to the changes that occur during
run-time. Moreover, the meta-models learn from the services environment and update the
models as necessary and hence making the meta-models actionable.
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