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A Process View Framework for Artifact-Centric Business Processes

Sira YongchareonChengfei Liu

2010

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Process Modelling• Process centric modelling• *Artifact Centric Process (ACP) modelling

– The focus is on describing how business data are changed / updated by a particular action or task.(Wikipedia)

The difference between these process modelling approaches:

Artifact Centric Process CentricProcess Logic Business rules and services Control flowsAbstraction Object based abstraction Task based abstraction

Introduction

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Components of ACP• Atrifacts

An artifact is a business entity or an object involved in a business process which contains a set of attributes and states ( including: creation- completion- achieving)

• Services A task /service is a task that requires input data from artifact or user and

produces the output by updating the state of artifact

• Business rules Determine the association between artifact and service in a condition-action

style. Each rule determine which service is invoked and which state of the artifact needs to be updated under a pre-condition.

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Motivation to process views

• Concerns:• Different levels of privacy, authority, access, etc. • Different levels of detail/ interest for different roles (stakeholders)

• Solution:• A framework that enables a customization of views for artifact centric

business processes to support different levels of details based on role, authority control, or privacy requirements.

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Operational view vs. Abstract views

Order Sale = {created: {init, open_for_item}, ready_for_shipping, in_processing :{delivering : {in_shipping, shipped}, billed}, closed}

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Problem definitions/ Approach• How to define, construct and validate constructed views for ACP?

• View Construction – State composition– State hiding

• View Validation– Rules for state tree preservation

Rule1. State ordering relation preserve – Rules for state transition preservation

Rule2. Hierarchy preservation Rule3. Atomicity of composite state preservation Rule4. business rule- Transitions of multiple artifacts preservation

– Rules for attribute condition preservation Rule5. Attribute condition preservation

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View Construction• View transformation by

– State composition: nesting states at the same level under the new defined composite state

– State hiding: only applicable for the nested states

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Consistency Rule 1 State ordering relation preservation

This rule ensures that the transition corresponding to business rules of two views are consistent

If Sx < Sy in ACP view respecting role1 then Sx < Sy in ACP view respecting role2

If Sx || Sy in ACP view respecting role1 then Sx || Sy in ACP view respecting role2 (|| denotes independency)

Consistency Rule 2Hierarchy preservation

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• Example:• state ‘Shipped’ preserves the hierarchy consistency

between the sale’s view and its underlying original view.

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Consistency Rules: modification of business rules

State conditioning modification of business rule• Hiding any states of an artifact will break up the transition1 relation

between such hidden state and other state.• Transition rearrangement is required. (consistency rule 3)

Attribute conditioning modification of business rule• Attempt to maintain the condition of each business rule that

corresponds to the rearranged transition as most specific as possible.

• (consistency rule 5: the new attribute is the disjunction of every attribute proposition )

1A transition means that the state of the artifact changes from source state to target state if the precondition of the related business rule holds

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Consistency Rule 3Atomicity of composite state preservation

• To preserve the existence of transition between hidden state and non hidden state and the nonexistence between hidden state and hidden state

• If any state under the composite state is hidden then– An entry transition (from non-hidden state to hidden state)

must be rearranged to composite state.– An exit transition (from non-hidden state to hidden state) must

be rearranged to the composite state.– An inner transition (from hidden state to hidden state) must be

removed.

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Example

• Entry transition (delivering)={ready-for-shipping, r4, in-shipping}• Exit transition(delivering) ={shipped, r7, billed}• r3 and r11 are exit transitions to be rearranged.• For composite state created r1 and r2 are inner transitions (as they don’t exist

in the entry or exit functions) that need to be hidden.

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Consistency Rule 4 Business rule- Transitions of multiple artifacts preservation– Ensures the integrity of a business rule of a hidden transition

where the rule is used in multiple artifacts.– If a business rule induces transitions of multiple artifacts and

any of these transitions in one artifact is hidden in ACP (l2) then such rule and its induced transitions in other artifacts must be hidden in ACP (l2)

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Contribution/Conclusion• A novel artifact centric process view

framework respecting roles – an artifact-centric business process model– a process view model with the construction

approach– a comprehensive set of view consistency rules to

preserve the structural and behavioural consistency between process views