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Zurich Research Laboratory - Business Integration Technologies

© 2008 IBM Corporation

Business Process Management

Beyond Consulting: The Technology Foundation

Dr. Jana KoehlerKsenia Wahler

IBM Zurich Research Laboratory - Business Integration Technologies

© 2008 IBM Corporation2 Business Process Management Lecture ETH

Outline

PART I

� Positioning of this lecture – how does it relate to what you have learned so far?

– Overview of ZRL-BIT research areas

� Distributed Computing, Enterprise Application Integration, Workflow Systems are converging into a single technology stack

� Introduction to Business Process Modeling with BPMN

PART II

� A Framework for Integrated Process and Object Life Cycle Modeling in Business Process Management

– a PhD thesis done in our group between April 2005 – Dec 2008

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Your EAI Lecture: Technologies for Distributed Sys tems

� Different technologies for Enterprise Application Integration, Distributed Systems/Computing, and Workflow Management Systems– vendors work towards integrated stacks/suites

� Distributed systems are great, but they increase the complexity of development and maintenance significantly– things happen that do not happen in a normal program,

(caused by) asynchronous communication, parallelism, loose coupling of systems

– research topic: the ever widening gap between conventional programming languages and what happens in a distributed system

� Programming Languages evolve towards higher levels of abstraction – “meta systems”, “megaprogramming”– new intermediaries (e.g. compilers) to automate difficult

tasks– reduce number of programming errors, development and

maintenance costs



Your Basic Workflow Model – Our Research Questions

� What are appropriate notations to describe/model/implement a business process?– for a business analyst– for an IT architect– for a developer

� Can these roles share a common language?– model vs. code? model=code?

� What distinguishes a good from a bad model?

� What about software life cycle challenges for such languages?

� Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) Standard by OMG� execution semantics contributed by our

group

� Compiler for BPMN

� parsing of process-oriented languages� static analysis (detect control-flow and data-

flow errors)� generate optimized code

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BPM Life Cycle: Your Lecture and the IBM Model

� Our contributions to support the life cycle of BPM applications

– pattern-based development and refactoring for modeling tools

• increase productivity by 70%, improve solution quality

– compare/merge of process models

• structural and semantic comparison, automatically apply changes



EAI – DC – WFMS move towards BPM/SOA

Vollmer & Peyret: The Forrester Wave™: Integration-Centric Business Process Management Suites, Q4 2006

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Silo ServicesComposite

ServicesVirtualizedServices

DynamicallyRe-Configurable

ServicesComponentizedIntegrated

Applications

Methods

Architecture

Business View

Modules ServicesProcess

Integration via Services

Dynamic Application Assembly

ComponentsObjects

Structured Analysis &

Design

Service OrientedModeling

Service + Process Modeling

+ Semantic Annotations +

Rules

Component Based

Development

Object OrientedModeling

Service + Process Modeling

Process Integration

via Services

Monolithic Architecture

Emerging SOA

Grid Enabled SOA

Dynamically Re-

Configurable Architecture

ComponentArchitecture

Layered Architecture

SOA

ApplicationFunction Oriented

ServiceOriented

(Application Neutral)

ServiceOriented

ServiceOriented

Application Function Oriented

Application Function Oriented

ServiceOriented

Integrated Technology Roadmap



Processes and Business Processes

� A process is a naturally occurring or designed sequence of changes of properties of an object or system

� “A business process describes key procedures within an organization.”(your definition)

– set of activities including people, IT systems, and other machines acting on information and raw materials that allow a business to produce goods and services and deliver them to its customers

– operational aspect of processes

� activities are not independent of each other

� they require resources

� they create physical/virtual objects and change the state of these objects

� they serve a purpose (a goal that may remain implicit)

� they result from the interaction of humans and technical systems with each other

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Business Process Management

� a business is a collection of business processes

– (re-) engineering business processes to be efficient is one of the primary functions of a company's management

– one of the most fundamental mechanisms that drives advances in our society

� creating a model for a process provides insights to improve the design of a process

– modeling tools support process simulation

� Business Process Management (BPM) is a structured way to manage the life cycle of business processes including

– modeling, analysis and design, execution, monitoring, and optimization



The BPM/SOA Portfolio

Modeling & Simulation

Business Activity

MonitoringExpertise and Accelerators

Process Execution Collaboration

Enterprise Architecture Service ManagementSOA

Composite Business

Applications

� all technology vendors work towards comprehensive and fully integrated offerings

� IBM WebSphere BPM

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WebSphere addresses a large middleware opportunity through an extensive product portfolio

BPM

Business Process Management Middleware infrastructure for modeling, executing, and monitoring business processesKey Products: WS Process Server, WS Monitor, WS Modeler, WS Business Service Fabric

Connectivity

Middleware infrastructure for integrating applications and servicesKey Products: WS Enterprise Service Bus, WS Message Broker, WS Adapters, WS Service Registry & Repository, Datapowerappliances

Messaging

Messaging backbone for facilitating the transfer of messages from application to applicationKey Products: WebSphere MQ

Foundation

Application Infrastructure Runtime environment for deploying applications and servicesKey Products: WS Application Server (WAS), WAS CE, WAS ND, WebSphere Extended Deployment, Project Zero

Commerce

E-commerce solution for B2B and B2C transactionsKey Products: WebSphere Commerce

Enterprise

Host Transaction Processing, OS and Utilities: Application and transaction processing infrastructure and utilities for the mainframe platformKey Products: CICS, TPF, Comm Server, PD Tools



Business Process Modeling Notation

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Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)

� first initiative to develop a notation: September 2000

� Version 1.0 of the BPMN Standard (OMG): May 2004

– a set of graphical symbols, informal semantics, many examples, first vendor support

� Version 1.1 with minor bug fixing: August 2007

� Version 2.0 submitted (Accenture,IBM/SAP/Oracle et al): November 2008

– metamodel (unique exchange format), formally described semantics

events

gatewaysactivities

sequence flows

a first impression

�BPM for business users as well as IT users

�graphical flow at business level

�textual refinements towards IT and runtime



Activity-Oriented Modeling of Behaviors

� the most commonly used and best understood approach

� well established in various disciplines

– software modeling: UML activity diagrams

– “business informatics”: Event-driven Process Chains (EPC) & workflows

� major conceptual building blocks shared by all approaches:

– activity (task, function, action) and its refinement into a subprocess

– explicitly prescribed order of activities in a flow diagram

– special types of diagram nodes to capture flow branching behavior (gateways, rules, connectors, control nodes)

• parallel + alternative branching, cycles

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EPC vs. BPMN vs. UML AD Notation

EPC

UML

BPMN

AcceptOrder

Validate Order

AnalyzeOrder

PerformCredit Check

RejectOrder

Reject

Accept



Main Diagram Elements* – Flow Objects: Events

� an example of a bad definition (from the BPMN 1.1. Spec):

– … something that “happens” during the course of a business process

– can start, interrupt, or end the flow (many types of events distinguished in the language specification)

� a better definition (from the ARIS Method 7.0, 4-98, 10/2006)

– “By an event we understand the fact that an informa tion object has taken on a business-relevant state which is controlling or influencing the further procedure of the business process.”

*as currently available in IBM WebSphere Business Modeler 6.1

start event

end event

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Main Diagram Elements – Flow Objects: Activities

� a distinguished step in the process that takes a set of inputs and converts them into a set of outputs (either or both sets may be empty) and that encapsulates a specific business function

– task (atomic process step, not further refined in the current model)

– subprocess (refined with a another BPMN diagram)



Main Diagram Elements - Connectors

Association

Sequence Flow Message Flow

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Main Diagram Elements - Artifacts

�Data Object

Name(State)

� Text Annotation

� Groupings of Elements



Inclusive Gateway (OR)

Parallel Gateway (AND)

Exclusive Gateway (XOR)

Main Diagram Elements – Flow Objects: Gateways

Semantics described in terms of token flow (from Petri Net Theory)

� state of the business process = distribution of tokens (marking) in the diagram

� Petri Net Theory offers a calculus of equations over token distributions

event-based and complex gateways not discussed in this lecture

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How should the Inclusive Gateway (OR-Join) behave?

� Long-standing open research problem

– Find a semantics that fits intuition but can be formalized

– Find right trade-off between expressivity and tractability, comply with runtimes

The Inclusive Gateway is activated if

- at least one incoming sequence flow has at least one token and

- for each empty incoming sequence flow, there is no corresponding token in the graph anywhere upstream of this sequence flow

- anywhere upstream = no path from a token to this sequence flow exists or this path visits a dominator or postdominator of the flow



What do we mean by a “good” Model?

� models are executable, e.g. by simulation

– they describe the possible behaviors of a process

– these behaviors result in execution traces that we can observe in the simulation

� a good model should be free of errors (“sound”)

� it should show the intended process behaviors, be well-structured and make it easy for the user to understand the process behavior

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What can go wrong when modeling a process?

� the model can lead to more behaviors than intended

– we obtain more instantiations of tasks than we thought

– lack of synchronization

� the model can lead to less behaviors than intended

– certain tasks do not execute (in some or all traces)

– deadlock


© 2008 IBM Corporation24 Business Process Management Lecture ETH2424

Control-flow Errors

� Deadlock

– process is blocked forever, some activities never execute

– occurs for example when paths originating from an XOR gateway are joined by an AND gateway

� Lack of Synchronization

– results in multiple executions of activities (and risks of uncontrolled data access)

– caused for example when paths originating from an AND or ORgateway are joined by an XOR gateway

A process is soundiff it is free from deadlocks and lack of synchronization.

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Summary Part I

� Converging technologies

– EAI + DC + WFMS = BPM/SOA

� Business Process Modeling Notation BPMN

� Soundness of process models

– with respect to the control flow

� Part II

– role and semantics of data in business processes

© 2008 IBM Corporation

A Framework for IntegratedProcess and Object Life Cycle Modelingin Business Process Management

Ksenia WahlerDoctoral Student

Advisor: Prof. H.C. Gall (University of Zurich)

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Business Integration Technologies – IBM Zurich Research Laboratory


State of business objects in process models

� State of a business object:

– a milestone in the overall processing of the object

– conveys processing result abstracting from details of performed operations

– can be monitored during process enactment

– e.g. Claim can be in states Granted, Settled, Rejected, etc.

� Several process modeling languages allow one to indicate the possible input and output states of activities by annotating data flow

SettleClaim

CloseClaim

NotifyRejection

Claim ClaimRegisterClaim

Claim Claim

EvaluateClaim

Check For Fraud

Claim

Claim Claim

Claim Claim

Claim

Claim

Claim

Granted?

Yes

No

[Granted] [Settled, Rejected]



Object life cycle models

� Object life cycle model:

– overall state evolution of business objects of a particular type

– defines legal states and transitions

– often represented as a finite state machine

� In context of BPM, object life cycle models can be used to

– specify state evolution requirements for business objects

– interpret monitored states during run time

– coordinate execution of business process activities

Opened

Granted

Rejected

Closed

Settled

Open

Grant

Settle

Reject

CloseClose

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Problems arise when modeling both: processes and object life cycles

� These models are complementary views that represent overlapping behavior

� Consistency is a major issue in any type of multi-view modeling

� Two models are consistent only if they do not contain contradicting assertions about the application being developed

� Relationship between process and object life cycle models is currently not well-understood and hence there is no support for consistency management

Application

view

view

control and data flow state evolutionper object type



Modeling without consistency management leads to in consistencies

� Inconsistent models make it impossible to implement an application that satisfies requirements specified in all models

� Models can no longer be used for rationalizing about an application that only satisfies some of the captured requirements

� For example, incorrect state interpretation according to an object life cycle model can lead to inappropriate decision-making

– Claimant only knowing the object life cycle for Claim assumes a Claim that is Grantedwill always be Settled, but this is not always the case according to the process model

SettleClaim

CloseClaim

NotifyRejection


Claim Claim

EvaluateClaim

Check For Fraud

Claim

Claim Claim

Claim Claim

Claim

Claim

Claim

Granted?

Yes

No

[Granted] [Settled, Rejected]Opened

Granted

Rejected

Closed

Settled

Open

Grant

Settle

Reject

CloseClose

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Framework for integrated process and object life cy cle modeling

Syntax and semantics of process and object life cyc le models

Resolution side-effect forecast

Inconsistency prioritization

Object life cycle extraction

Process model generation

Inconsistency resolution Model transformations

Transition from design to implementation

Intra-model consistency Inter-model consistency

Consistency

Tool and method: Object Life Cycle Explorer for Web Sphere Business Modeler



Syntax and semantics of process models

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Control-flow syntax and semantics (already introduc ed in Part I)

SettleClaim

CloseClaim

NotifyRejection


Claim Claim

EvaluateClaim

Check For Fraud

Claim

Claim Claim

Claim Claim

Claim

Claim

Claim

Granted?

Yes

No

[Granted] [Settled, Rejected]

SettleClaim

CloseClaim

NotifyRejection

RegisterClaim

EvaluateClaim

Check For Fraud

extract control flow



Data-flow and object state syntax in existing modeling languages

activity

data object[state]

actionaction

type[state1, state2, …]


UML Activity Diagrams BPMN

<<datastore>>type

[state1, state2, …]

actionaction

routed data flow

repository data flow

objectstate

function

objectstate

EPC

event

function

event

object[state]

action <<datastore>>type



custom notation for repository data flow

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Data-flow and object state semantics in existing modeling languages

� Data-flow semantics is not yet precisely defined in many modeling languages

� Semantic ambiguities leave many unanswered questions, for example:– Does an object of type Claim exist before the process execution begins? – Is the Claim object received on the input pin of the Check For Fraud action the same

object that is produced on the output pin of this action?– What state transitions does the Evaluate Claim action induce during the execution of

this process?

– Do the Check For Fraud and Evaluate Claim actions change state of the same Claim object or different Claim copies?

SettleClaim

CloseClaim

NotifyRejection


Claim Claim

EvaluateClaim

Check For Fraud

[Open]

[Granted][Fraud, NoFraud]

[Open,Registered]

[Granted,Rejected]

[Settled]

[Closed]Claim

Claim

Claim

Claim

Granted?

Yes

No

Claim

Claim Claim

Claim



Disambiguating data-flow semantics: object manipula tion

create read update

a a at [s1,…,sp] t [s21,…,s2q]t [s1,…,sp] t [s11,…,s1p]

� Commonly identified object manipulation operations (object-oriented data modeling, databases): create, read, update and delete

� Decisions can also manipulate objects by state-based control routing

t1[s11,…,s1p]

t2[s21,…,s2q]

e1

e2

at [s1,…,sp]t [s1,…,sp]

dep(a,t,s1) = {s1} … dep(a,t,sp) = {sp}

no state change

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Disambiguating data-flow semantics: object passing

ContractContractDraftContract

Review By LE

ReviewBy CS Reconcile

Feedback

Contract

Contract[RevisionRequired]

Contract[Approved]

[UnderReview]

[Approved,RevisionRequired]



� Similar to passing arguments to a function in a programming language, objects can be passed between nodes by value or by reference

� Pass-by-value: each action updates an independent object copy

c1:Contract c2:Contract c4:Contract

c3:Contract



Disambiguating data-flow semantics: object passing

DraftContract

Review By LE

ReviewBy CS

Contract[RevisionRequired]

Contract[Approved]

Contract

[Approved,RevisionRequired]Contract

Contract[Approved,RevisionRequired]

Contract[UnderReview]

Contract

Contract

dep(Review By LE, Contract, RevisionRequired) = {RevisionRequired}

dep(Review By CS, Contract, RevisionRequired) = {RevisionRequired}

<<datastore>>Contract

c:Contract

� Pass-by-reference: several actions manipulate the same object

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Syntax and semantics of object life cycle models



Object life cycle models as state evolution protoco ls

� OLCt is originally in its initial state

� On receipt of a message in the form (ssrc, stgt) from system X, OLCt produces either true or false as output

– Output is true if the current state of OLCt is ssrc and there is a transition from ssrc to stgt, in which case stgt becomes the current state of OLCt

– Otherwise, the output is false

� System X is conformant with the protocol OLCt only if there are no false outputs

(ssrc, stgt)

true / false

OLCt X

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Object life cycle conformance

� Object life cycle conformance: Let Q = {<s11, …,s1p>, …, <sn1, …, snq>} be a set of state sequences generated by all possible executions of some system X. We say that X is conformant with a given object life cycle model OLCt if and only if for every state sequence q = <s1, …,sr> in Q:

– there is a transition from si to si+1 in OLCt for 1 ≤ i < r

– q begins with the initial state of OLCt

– q ends with the final state of OLCt

� A system that generates a state sequence <Opened, Granted, Closed>or <Initial, Opened, Granted, Rejected, Closed, Final> is not conformant

� A system that does not generate any state sequences or only one <Initial, Opened, Granted, Settled, Closed, Final> is conformant

� Object life cycle coverage is defined as the converse of conformance

Opened

Granted

Rejected

Closed

Settled

Open

Grant

Settle

Reject

CloseClose



Consistency

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Inter-model consistency of process and object life cycle models

� Process and object life cycle consistency: Let Q = {<s11, …,s1p>, …, <sn1, …, snq>} be a set of state sequences generated by all possible executions of a given process model P. We say that P and a given object life cycle model OLCt are consistent if and only if

– P is conformant with OLCt and

– P provides a coverage for OLCt

(ssrc, stgt)

true / false

OLCt X



Static analysis for computing induced transitions, first and last states

PrepareSettlement

EvaluateClaim

RegisterClaim

NotifyRejection

SettleClaim

Review

CloseClaim

Claim[Granted]

Claim[Rejected]

Claim[Opened]

Claim[Opened]

Claim[Granted, Rejected]

Claim[Granted,

Reviewed]

Claim[NeedsReview,Settled]

Claim Claim[Closed]

Claim Claim[Reviewed]

Claim[NeedsReview]

Claim[Settled]

first state last state induced transition

PrepareSettlement

EvaluateClaim

RegisterClaim

NotifyRejection

SettleClaim

Review

CloseClaim

Claim[→Opened]

Claim[Opened→Granted][Opened→Rejected]

Claim[Granted→NeedsReview

[Reviewed→NeedsReview][Granted→Settled]

[Granted→NeedsReview]

Claim[Reviewed→NeedsReview]

Claim[Settled→Closed]

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Consistency checking

� Consistency conditions are defined in terms of induced transitions, first and last states of a process model and transitions of an object life cycle model

� Example process model and object life cycle model are not consistent:– Non-conformant transition: (Settle Claim, Granted, Needs Review) is an induced

transition, but (Granted, NeedsReview) is not a transition in the object life cycle

– Non-conformant last state: Rejected is a last state, but there is no transition from Rejected to the final state in the object life cycle

– Non-covered transition: (Rejected, Closed) is a transition in the object life cycle, but there is no induced transition (a, Rejected, Closed) in the process model

Opened

Granted

Rejected

Closed

Settled

Open

GrantReject

CloseClose

PrepareSettlement

EvaluateClaim

RegisterClaim

NotifyRejection

SettleClaim

Review

CloseClaim

Claim[→Opened]

Claim[Opened→Granted][Opened→Rejected]

Claim[Granted→NeedsReview

[Reviewed→NeedsReview][Granted→Settled]

[Granted→NeedsReview]

Claim[Reviewed→NeedsReview]

Claim[Settled→Closed]



Other components of the integration framework

Syntax and semantics of process and object life cyc le models

Resolution side-effect forecast

Inconsistency prioritization

Object life cycle extraction

Process model generation

Inconsistency resolution Model transformations

Transition from design to implementation

Intra-model consistency Inter-model consistency

Consistency

Tool and method: Object Life Cycle Explorer for Web Sphere Business Modeler

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Tool support and validation



Object Life Cycle Explorer for WebSphere Business M odeler

� Released on IBM alphaWorks (http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/olcexplorer)

� Validated using two industrial case studies (CAD management and insurance)

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Modeling strategy: Validate-Check-Resolve

PM OLC

PM’

OLC’

(a) model

(b) extract

(d) adapt

!

X

(c) validate

(e) check consistency

(g) make further changes

(f) resolve inconsistencies

PM

OLC

!

X

process model

object life cycle model

validation errors

inconsistencies

WBM Object Life Cycle Explorer



Summary

� In multi-view modeling, modeler needs to be aware of:– model semantics– model consistency– modeling strategy

� Integration framework facilitates the use of process and object life cycle models as complementary views on the same application

� Consistent process and object life cycle models can be used to derive an activity-oriented or a data-oriented implementation

� Business Process Management is the key approach today to– re-engineer organizations with a focus on optimization and flexibility– systematically implement processes in a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)– bridge Business and IT

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