MANAGING DATA DEPENDENCY CONSTRAINTS THROUGH BUSINESS PROCESSES

Joe Y.-C Lin, Shazia Sadiq

2010

Abstract

Business Process Management (BPM) and related tools and systems have generated tremendous advantages for enterprise systems as they provide a clear separation between process, application and data logic. In spite of the abstraction value that BPM provides through explicit articulation of process models, a seamless flow between the data, application and process layers has not been fully realized in mainstream enterprise software, thus often leaving process models disconnected from underlying business semantics captured through data and application logic. The result of this disconnect is disparity (and even conflict) in enforcing various rules and constraints in the different layers. In this paper, we propose to synergise the process and data layers through the introduction of data dependency constraints, that can be modelled at the process level, and enforced at the data level through a (semi) automated translation into DBMS native procedures. The simultaneous and consistent specification ensures that disparity between the process and data logic can be minimized.

References

  1. Aalst, W. M. P., Hofstede, A. H. M., 2000. Verification of workflow task structures: A Petri-net-based approach. Information Systems, vol. 25(1) pp. 43-69.
  2. Aalst, W. M. P., Weske, M., Grünbauer, D., 2005. Case handling: a new paradigm for business process support. Data and Knowledge Engineering 53, 129-162.
  3. Ailamaki, A., Ioannidis, Y., Livny, M., 1998. Scientific workflow management by database management. In Proc. Int. Conf. on Statistical and Scientific Database Management, pp.190-199.
  4. Date, C. J., 1981. Referential Integrity. In Proc. of 7th Int. Conf. on VLDB, September 9-11, 1981, Cannes, France. pp.2-12.
  5. Du, N., Liang, Y., Zhao, L., 2008. Data-flow skeleton filled with activities driven workflow design. In Proc. of 2nd Int. Conf. on Ubiquitous Information Management and Communication. pp. 570-574.
  6. Fan, W., Geerts, F., Jia, X., Kementsietsidis, A., 2008. Conditional Functional Dependencies for Capturing Data Inconsistencies. ACM Transaction on Database Systems, Vol.33, No. 2, Article 6.
  7. Hull, R., Llirbat, F., Simon, E., Su, J., Dong, G., Kumar, B., Zhou, G., 1999. Declarative workflows that support easy modification and dynamic browsing. In Proc. Int. Joint Conf. on Work Activities Coordination and Collaboration, pp. 69-78.
  8. Joncheere, N., Deridder, D., Straeten, R., Jonckers, V., 2008. A Framework for Advanced Modularization and Data Flow in Workflow Systems. In Proc.of the 6th Int. Conf. on Service-Oriented Computing, pp. 592- 598.
  9. Kunzle, V., Reichert, M., 2009. Towards Object-aware Process Management Systems: Issues, Challenges, Benefits. In Proc. 10th Int'l Workshop on Business Process Modeling, Development, and Support (BPMDS'09), June 2008, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Springer, LNBIP 29, pp. 197-210
  10. Medeiros, C., Vossen, G.,Weske, M., 1995. WASA: a workflow-based architecture to support scientific database applications. In Revell, N., Tjoa, A.M. (eds.) DEXA 1995. LNCS, vol. 978, Springer, Heidelberg.
  11. Object Management Group, 2009. Unified Modelling Language, http://www.uml.org/
  12. Object Management Group/Business Process Management Initiative, 2009. Business Process Modelling Notation, http://www.bpmn.org/
  13. Reijers, H., Limam, S., and W.M.P. van der Aalst. Product-based Workflow Design. Journal of Management Information systems, 20(1): 229-262, 2003
  14. Russell, N., Hofstede, A. H. M., Edmond, D. Aalst, W. M. P., 2005. Workflow Data Patterns: Identification, Representation and Tool Support. In Proc. of the 24th Int. Conf. on Conceptual Modelling, vol 3716 of LNCS, pp 353-368. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
  15. Sun, S., Zhao, J., Nunamaker, J., Sheng, O., 2006. Formulating the Data-Flow Perspective for Business Process Management. Information Systems Research vol. 17(4), pp. 374-391.
  16. Wang, J., Kumar, A., 2005. A framework for documentdriven workflow systems. In Proc. Business Process Management 2005(BPM2005), pp. 285-301.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Y.-C Lin J. and Sadiq S. (2010). MANAGING DATA DEPENDENCY CONSTRAINTS THROUGH BUSINESS PROCESSES . In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 3: ICEIS, ISBN 978-989-8425-06-5, pages 52-59. DOI: 10.5220/0002898000520059


in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis10,
author={Joe Y.-C Lin and Shazia Sadiq},
title={MANAGING DATA DEPENDENCY CONSTRAINTS THROUGH BUSINESS PROCESSES},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 3: ICEIS,},
year={2010},
pages={52-59},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002898000520059},
isbn={978-989-8425-06-5},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 3: ICEIS,
TI - MANAGING DATA DEPENDENCY CONSTRAINTS THROUGH BUSINESS PROCESSES
SN - 978-989-8425-06-5
AU - Y.-C Lin J.
AU - Sadiq S.
PY - 2010
SP - 52
EP - 59
DO - 10.5220/0002898000520059