Bassil, Sarita

2005, Bassil, Sarita, Rinderle, Stefanie, Keller, Rudolf, Kropf, Peter, Reichert, Manfred

The capability to safely interrupt business process activities is an important requirement for advanced processaware information systems. Indeed, exceptions stemming from the application environment often appear while one or more application-related process activities are running. Safely interrupting an activity consists of preserving its context, i.e., saving the data associated with this activity. This is important since possible solutions for an exceptional situation are often based on the current data context of the interrupted activity. In this paper, a data classification scheme based on data relevance and on data update frequency is proposed and discussed with respect to two different real-world applications. Taking into account this classification, a correctness criterion for interrupting running activities while preserving their context is proposed and analyzed.

2002-1-23, Bassil, Sarita, Benyoucef, Morad, Keller, Rudolf, Kropf, Peter, Tjoa, A Min, Wagner, Roland

Workflows (Wfs) are a major enabling technology for e-commerce. lit our research, a Combined Negotiation (CN) is modeled and enacted using Wf technology,. The modeling task captures the sequencing of the individual negotiations as well as the dependencies between them, and the enacting task runs the model. A CN support system (CONSENSUS) is used by the user to perforin both tasks. Supporting dynamic modifications to the model during runtime should increase the benefits of our approach. In this paper, we highlight the need for such support by identifying the dynamic aspects that can occur while negotiating the different items of a package (i.e., the CN object). To address these aspects, we experimented using ADEPT, a Wf Management System supporting dynamism. This leads us to discuss the Wf Reference Model of the Wf Management Coalition, and suggest a "dynamic" extension to the current functional areas and architecture.

2004, Bassil, Sarita, Keller, Rudolf, Kropf, Peter, Desel, Jörg, Pernici, Barbara, Weske, Mathias

In this paper, we introduce a workflow-oriented system architecture for the processing of client requests (CRs) for container transportation. In the context of multi-transfer container transportation, the processing of CRs can be achieved by specific sequences of interdependent activities. These sequences need to be just-in-time created. They also need to be adapted to deal with unexpected events that may occur. Workflow technology is used to model and to manage the processing of CRs. The creation and the adaptation of activity sequences require first, an optimized scheduling of a limited number of resources (by also respecting CRs constraints); and second, a number of special workflow concepts and functionality to correctly manage activity sequences. Optimization models are involved to take care of the resource management and of the activity scheduling. Enhancements of workflow concepts and functionality for workflow management systems are investigated to deal with an activity sequence creation and adaptation. Finally, the proposed architecture includes a rule processing part to reduce the time-consuming manual interaction with the system.

2003, Bassil, Sarita, Bourbeau, Benoît, Keller, Rudolf, Kropf, Peter

This paper introduces a dynamic approach to manage the processing of client requests in a multi-transfer container transportation (MTCT) system. At the operational level, this type of system is faced with a continuously changing environment. In this context, the need for dynamic creation and adaptation of solutions is of utmost importance. The adopted approach is based on a two-layer framework that exploits workflow technology. The latter proposes a formalism to describe sequences of activities to be enacted when processing requests, hence reducing the need for manual, time-consuming management and organization. The proposed two-layer framework has a workflow layer that encapsulates the set of concurrently running workflows associated to client requests. A coordination layer is mainly responsible for the instantiation of new workflows to be inserted in the workflow layer and for modifications of running ones. These modifications are motivated by resource sharing issues or triggered by unanticipated/unexpected events. According to this two-layer framework, an implementation of a prototype for a MTCT system is finally presented.