=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Business Service Modeling for the Service-Oriented Enterprise
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-800/paper-3-4.pdf
|volume=Vol-800
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/eis/ArachchigeWJ11
}}
==Business Service Modeling for the Service-Oriented Enterprise==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-800/paper-3-4.pdf
Business Service Modeling for the Service-Oriented
Enterprise 1(Extended Abstract)
Jeewanie Jayasinghe Arachchige, Hans Weigand, Manfred Jeusfeld
Tilburg University, P.O.Box 90153,
5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
{J.JayasingheArachchig, H.Weigand, Manfred.Jeusfeld}@uvt.nl
Keywords: Business Services, REA, Service-Oriented Design
Service-oriented architectures are the upcoming business standard for realizing
enterprise information systems, thus creating a need for analysis and design methods
that are truly service-oriented. Most research on this topic so far takes a strict software
engineering perspective. For a proper alignment between the business and the IT, a
service perspective at the business level is needed as well. Although few researchers
realized the importance of business thinking at service design, notation for service
design is still lacking.
Using an MDA approach, [1] introduces a new business service and resource
modeling language - BSRM based on the Resource-Event-Agent (REA) business
ontology. The constructs of the BSRM language and their relationships are grounded
in a meta-model which provides comprehensive specification using UML notation.
Following the REA, we defined the service as a specialization of economic resource
in the meta-model. As the resources are first class citizen of REA, BSRM gives a
better insight to the value co-creation which is the main focus of services. Further, we
distinguish two service specializations: exchange service and conversion service,
corresponding to the two basic REA dualities. Each of them corresponds to a group of
decrement and increment economic events in REA. The service classification model
developed in [2], categorizes services into several categories. Among these service
categories enhancing services and the sub-services which have part of relationship to
the core services are special types of services that play a major role in service
modeling at business level. These service categories correspond to different roles of
the service type in our model.
The concept of enhancing services which adds value to the any other service, is
introduced as another service category in our model. Considering the situation where
core-service realization involves multiple value activities and it makes sense to view
these value activities as independent services that are shared by different contexts, we
identified the forth category of services as sub-services. Sub- service can be a part-of
1
Jayasinghe Arachchige J., Weigand, H., and Jeusfeld, M.: Business Service
Modeling for the Service-Oriented Enterprise. International Journal of Information
System Modeling and Design, Vol. 3(1) - 2012, (accepted).
61
service of core service which is called core sub-service, or enhancing sub-service
which is called coordination service. [3] extended the basic REA stockflow concept
by adding specialization to the stockflow relationship as inflow and outflow. We
adopt this specialization into our model as a relationship between Economic Resource
Type and Service Type.
All these concepts which are defined in the meta-model, are denoted with a simple
modeling notation called -BSRM in [1]. A major difference of BSRM with other
service modeling approaches is the resource perspective of services. We have
included resources not only because they are needed to describe service effects, but
also since resources play a prominent role in new service design [4]. Secondly, in
contrast to most other approaches that only consider one type of relationship between
services, we identify many service linkages, in order to catch more semantics, keeping
in mind the tenet that meaning is captured in structural relationships. The BSRM
design steps provide a simple direction to a designer to use this modeling language at
CIM level in any real situation.
As it is not feasible to grasp all relevant concerns to a single model, we mapped the
service modeling language with complimentary models, in particular value network
(e3value), data model (ER) and process models (BPMN). By mapping the meta-
model with other model types at CIM and PIM level, we have shown how it can
support truly service-oriented IS development.
BSRM is not only guided by meta-model, it has been formalized using the meta-
modeling facilities of Conceptbase[5]. This does not only ensure formal validation but
has also provided us immediately with a workable BSRM modeling tool. Further, we
evaluated the viability of BSRM by feature comparison and applying to a real world
case study in the logistic domain.
BSRM is not only a vehicle for communication with business analysts but also a
basis for service-oriented value analysis. All in all, we have described and evaluated
BSRM that we claim to be the first specific service modeling language at CIM level.
References
1. Jayasinghe Arachchige J., Weigand, H., and Jeusfeld, M. (2012): Business
Service Modeling for the Service-Oriented Enterprise. International Journal of
Information System Modeling and Design, Vol. 3(1), (accepted).
2. Weigand H., Johannesson, P., Andersson, B., & Bergholtz , M. (2009). Value-
based Service Modeling and Design: Toward a Unified View of Services. In
Proc. of CAiSE ‘09, Springer, 410-424.
3. Gailly, F., Laurier, W., Poels, G. (2008). Positioning and Formalizing the REA
enterprise ontology, International Journal of Information Systems 22, 219-248.
4. Froehle, C.M., Roth, A.V. (2007). A Resource-Process Framework of New
Service Development, Production and Operations Management, 16(2), 169-
181,183-188.
5. Jeusfeld, M.A., Jarke, M., & Mylopoulos, J. (2009). Metamodeling for Method
Engineering. MIT Press.
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