Enabling the Analysis of Cross-Cutting Aspects in Ad-hoc ProcessesAuthors: Seyed-Mehdi-Reza BeheshtiBoualem BenatallahHamid Reza Motahari-Nezhad

University of New South WalesSydney, AustraliaCAiSE 2013

Analysis of Cross-Cutting Aspects inAd-hoc ProcessesPeopleWeb ServicesIT SystemsWorkflows

Ad-hoc Processes (BPs)

ExecutionLog

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Fact:- Evolution of process artifacts over time.

Solution: - Analysing the history (artifact versioning)- Analysing the provenance (where they come from and who touched and did what on them).

- Analysing other aspects …

• Approaches– Artifact-Centric Processes/Workflows– Modelling and querying artifact-centric processes• Shortcomings– Assuming a predefined document structure– Assuming that the execution of the processes is achieved through a BPM system (e.g., BPEL) or a workflow process.• Challenges:– Evolution of artifacts over time.– Analyzing evolving aspects of artifacts.

State of the Art: Approaches and Challenges

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Solution Overview

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Process Logs (AEM: Artifact Evolution Model)

Modelling

Evolution

TimeseriesPerspectivesand Goals

InteractiveQuery Language Derivation

Preliminaries

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• Artifact– is a mutable object: its attributes (and their values) are able or likely to change over periods of time.• Artifact Version/Instance– is an immutable deep copy of an artifact at a certain point in time• Activity– an action (e.g. create, read, update, …) performed on or caused by an artifact version• Actor– an entity acting as a catalyst of an activity

Preliminaries

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• Process– a group of related activities performed on or caused by artifacts.– A process can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured.- Ad-hoc processes have flexible underlying process definition where the control flow between activities cannot be modelled in advance but simply occurs during run time.

- The semistructured nature of adhoc processes’ data requires organizing process entities (people and artifacts) and relationships among them in graphs.

Preliminaries

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• Process– a group of related activities performed on or caused by artifacts.– A process can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured.• Artifact Evolution– series of related activities on top of an artifact over different periods of time.– artifacts develop and change gradually over time as they pass through the business’s operations.• Provenance– refers to the documented history of an immutable object which tracks the steps by which the object was derived.– describes that what manipulations were performed on the artifact to get it to this point.

Motivating Scenario(case scenario for breast cancer treatment)

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Modeling Process Artifacts and their Relationships(AEM: Artifact Evolution Model)• Nodes (Entities, Folders)– Entities (Artifact Versions): Artifacts are represented by a set of instances each for a given point in time.

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Artifact versions considered as data objects that exist separately and have a unique identity.

Modeling Process Artifacts and their Relationships(AEM: Artifact Evolution Model)• Nodes (Entities, Folders)– Folder (Artifacts): • a timed container for a set of related entities.• represent the artifact evolution• new members can be added to timed folders over time.

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Set of related artifact versions

Modeling Process Artifacts and their Relationships(AEM: Artifact Evolution Model)

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• Relationship (Activity-Relationship, Activity-Path)– Activity-Relationship: • an explicit relationship that directly links two entities in the AEM graph.• defined as an action performed on or caused by an artifactversion, and can be described by attributes such as: What (lifecycle/archive activity), How (creation, use, deletion, storage, transfer) , When , Who, Where, Which, …UpdateWho: AlexWhen: @timestampWhere: organization-nameWhich: device-is…

Modeling Process Artifacts and their Relationships(AEM: Artifact Evolution Model)

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• Relationship (Activity-Relationship, Activity-Path)– Activity-Path: • an implicit relationship that is a container for a set of related activities which are connected through a path.

Modeling Process Artifacts and their Relationships(AEM: Artifact Evolution Model)• Relationship (Activity-Relationship, Activity-Path)– Activity-Path: • an implicit relationship that is a container for a set of related activities which are connected through a path.Path Node

• Contains a set of paths (i.e. a path is a transitiverelationship between two entities)

• Can be a placeholder for a given query that resultsin a set of paths.

Beheshti et al. : A Query Language for Analyzing Business Processes Execution. BPM 2011: 281-297

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Querying Cross-Cutting Aspects• FPSPARQL [BPM’11]:• A Folder-Path enabled extension of the SPARQL.– SPARQL:• Graph Query Language• Official W3C standard.• Subgraphs and Paths are not first class objects.11/20

select ?variable1 ?variable2 ...where { pattern1. pattern2. ... }

(A basic SPARQL query)

Querying Cross-Cutting Aspects• FPSPARQL Extension:

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discover.[ evolutionOf(artifact1,artifact2) | derivationOf(artifact) |timeseriesOf(artifact | actor) ];

filter( what(type),how(action),who(actor),where(location),which(system),when(t1,t2,t3,t4) );

where { #define variables such as artifact, actor, and location }

Querying Cross-Cutting Aspects• Evolution Queries:– For querying the evolution of an AEM entity En, all activity-paths on top of En ancestors should be discovered.

13/20discover.evolutionOf(?artifact1,?artifact2);where{ ?artifact1 @id v2. ?artifact2 @id v3. …}

Querying Cross-Cutting Aspects• Derivation Queries:– Derivation of an entity En can be defined as all entities which En found to have been derived from them.

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discover.derivationOf(?artifact);where{ ?artifact @id v3. …}

Querying Cross-Cutting Aspects• Timeseries Queries:– Derivation of an entity En can be defined as all entities which En found to have been derived from them.

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discover.timeseriesOf(?actor); filter(when("T1",?,?,"T15")); where{ ?actor @id Eli-id. }

Architecture and Implementation

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Architecture and Implementation

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Experiment

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OPMOpen Provenance Model

Experiment

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Datasets: Dutch academic hospitalSupply Chain Management loge-Enterprise Course

– Analyzing evolving aspects of artifacts (i.e. versioning and provenance) over time is important and will expose many hidden information among entities in process graphs.– This information can be used to detect the actual processing behavior and therefore, to improve the ad-hoc processes.

Conclusion

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Questions

Suggestions