Abstract
The main idea in this paper is to show how flexible processes can be designed by combining generic process templates and business rules. We instantiate a process by applying rules to specific case data, and running a materialization algorithm. The customized process instance is then executed in an existing workflow engine. We present an architecture and also give an algorithm for process materialization. The rules are written in a logic-based language like Prolog. Our focus is on capturing deeper process knowledge and achieving a holistic approach to robust process design that encompasses control flow, resources and data, as well as makes it easier to accommodate changes to business policy.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
van der Aalst, W.M.P.: The Application of Petri Nets to Workflow Management. The Journal of Circuits, Systems and Computers 8(1), 21–66 (1998)
van der Aalst, W.M.P., et al.: Workflow Patterns. Distributed and Parallel Databases 14(3), 5–51 (2003)
van der Aalst, W.M.P., Rosemann, M., Dumas, M.: Deadline-based escalation in process-aware information systems. Decis. Support Syst. 43(2), 492–511 (2007)
Bhattacharya, K., et al.: Towards Formal Analysis of Artifact-Centric Business Process Models. In: Business Process Management (BPM), Brisbane, Australia, pp. 288–304 (2007)
Chiu, D.K.W., Li, Q., Karlapalem, K.: Web interface-driven cooperative exception handling in ADOME workflow management system. Web Information Systems Engineering 26(2), 93–120 (2001)
Clocksin, W.F., Mellish, C.S.: Programming in Prolog. Springer, New York (1987)
Curbera, F., Khalaf, R., Leymann, F., Weerawarana, S.: Exception Handling in the BPEL4WS Language. In: van der Aalst, W.M.P., ter Hofstede, A.H.M., Weske, M. (eds.) BPM 2003. LNCS, vol. 2678, pp. 276–290. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Dumas, M., van der Aalst, W.M.P., Hofstede, A.H.M.: Process Aware Information Systems. Wiley Interscience, Hoboken (2005)
Goedertier, S., Vanthienen, J.: Designing Compliant Business Processes with Obligations and Permission. In: Proceedings of Workshop on Business Process Design, pp. 5–14 (2006)
Goedertier, S., Mues, C., Vanthienen, J.: Specifying process-aware access control rules in SBVR. In: Paschke, A., Biletskiy, Y. (eds.) RuleML 2007. LNCS, vol. 4824, pp. 39–52. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Halliday, J.J., et al.: Flexible Workflow Management in the OPENflow System. In: Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC 2001), pp. 82–92 (2001)
Hwang, S.-Y., Tang, J.: Consulting past exceptions to facilitate workflow exception handling. Decision Support Systems 37(1), 49–69 (2004)
JBoss Community, Drools Flow, http://www.jboss.org/drools/drools-flow.html
Joeris, G.: Defining Flexible Workflow Execution Behaviors. In: Enterprise-wide and Cross-enterprise Workflow Management: Concepts, Systems, Applications, GI Workshop Proceedings – Informatik, pp. 49–55 (1999)
Kiepuszewski, B., ter Hofstede, A.H.M., Bussler, C.J.: On structured workflow modelling. In: Wangler, B., Bergman, L.D. (eds.) CAiSE 2000. LNCS, vol. 1789, pp. 431–445. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Kumar, A., Liu, R.: A rule-based framework using role patterns for business process compliance. In: Bassiliades, N., Governatori, G., Paschke, A. (eds.) RuleML 2008. LNCS, vol. 5321, pp. 58–72. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Kumar, A., Wang, J.: A framework for designing resource driven workflow systems. In: Rosemann, M., vom Brocke, J. (eds.) The International Handbook on Business Process Management, Springer, Heidelberg (2009) (forthcoming)
Lienhard, H., Künzi, U.-M.: Workflow and business rules: a common approach. BPTrends., http://www.bptrends.com/
Mangan, P., Sadiq, S.: On Building Workflow Models for Flexible Processes. In: Proceedings of the 13th Australasian Conference on Database Technologies (ADC), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, vol. 5, pp. 103–109 (2002)
Müller, R., Rahm, E.: Rule-Based Dynamic Modification of Workflows in a Medical Domain. In: Buchmann, A.P. (ed.) BTW 1999, Freiburg im Breisgau, pp. 429–448. Springer, Berlin (1999)
OMG, Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) Version 1.0. OMG Final Adopted Specification, Object Management Group (2006)
Reichert, M., Dadam, P.: Adept_flex—Supporting Dynamic Changes of Workflows Without Losing Control. J. Intell. Inf. Syst. 10(2), 93–129 (1998)
Reijers, H., et al.: Improved Model Management with Aggregated Business Process Models. Data and Knowledge Engineering 68(2), 221–243 (2009)
Rinderle, S., Reichert, M., Dadam, P.: Correctness criteria for dynamic changes in workflow systems. Data and Knowledge Engineering 50(1), 9–34 (2004)
Rosemann, M., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: A configurable reference modeling language. Information Systems 32(1), 1–23 (2007)
Weske, M.: Flexible Modeling and Execution of Workflow Activities. In: Proceedings of the 31st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), pp. 713–722 (1998)
XPDL. Workflow management coalition workflow standard, http://www.wfmc.org/xpdl.html
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kumar, A., Yao, W. (2009). Process Materialization Using Templates and Rules to Design Flexible Process Models. In: Governatori, G., Hall, J., Paschke, A. (eds) Rule Interchange and Applications. RuleML 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5858. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04985-9_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04985-9_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-04984-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-04985-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)