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Flexible Integration of Blockchain with Business Process Automation: A Federated Architecture

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Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 386))

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Abstract

Blockchain technology enables various business transactions to be performed in an immutable and transparent manner. Within the business process management community, blockchain technology has been positioned as a way to better support the execution of inter-organisational business processes, where the entities involved may not completely trust each other. However, the architectures proposed thus far in the literature for blockchain-enabled business process management can be described as “heavy-weight”, since they promote the blockchain platform as the monolithic focal point of all business logic and process operations. We propose an alternative: a federated and flexible architecture that leverages the capabilities of blockchain, but without overloading the functionalities of the blockchain platform with those already extant in Business Process Management Systems (BPMSs). We illustrate its benefits, and demonstrate its feasibility, through the implementation of a prototype.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.ethereum.org/.

  2. 2.

    https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/fabric.

  3. 3.

    https://github.com/yawlfoundation/yawl.

  4. 4.

    https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric-sdk-java.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

    Michael Adams, Suriadi Suriadi & Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede

  2. Smeal College of Business, Penn State University, University Park, USA

    Akhil Kumar

Authors
  1. Michael Adams
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  2. Suriadi Suriadi
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  3. Akhil Kumar
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  4. Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Adams .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France

    Nicolas Herbaut

  2. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Marcello La Rosa

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Adams, M., Suriadi, S., Kumar, A., ter Hofstede, A.H.M. (2020). Flexible Integration of Blockchain with Business Process Automation: A Federated Architecture. In: Herbaut, N., La Rosa, M. (eds) Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2020. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 386. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58135-0_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58135-0_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-58134-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-58135-0

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