On realization of artifact-centric model for business processes

In fast-paced business market, business processes which are series of activities performed by various stakeholders are an essential element for an enterprise to ensure growth and most significantly, gain competitive advantages over its rival. To communicate business goals and perform business process reengineering, business process modeling is a significant activity for representing a business process in a comprehensive format. Currently, most existing standards for business process modeling and workflow are based on activity-centric approach. However, this approach cannot provide complete unified information of business processes since data is incorporated at a limited level. To address this issue, a new paradigm so called artifact-centric approach has been emerging. It provides many benefits to business process modeling areas. The approach focuses on business artifacts as key entities for modeling business processes. One of the challenges is workflow realization of artifact-centric model. Based on our observation, there is an existing approach for realizing artifact-centric process models. This approach is based on the conversion of artifact-centric model into a procedural model. The advantage of this realization approach is ease of implementation. However, the flexibility of an artifact-centric model is reduced since tasks or services are locked up by control flows. Moreover, the conceptual flow diagram may not preserve business logic defined in the ECA rules correctly. In this research, we aim to investigate approach for realizing the artifact-centric model without transforming the model. There are several challenges identified. To address challenges of this realization approach, we develop the executable model of artifact-centric business process. Then, we present the system so called artifact centric process system. Moreover, we present a technique to use XQuery to monitor and track a running process. A test case is used which shows that our system is able to execute and manage a business process correctly. Also, running processes can be monitored and tracked using a set of queries based on XQuery. Furthermore, we also extend the system to support the process execution across organizations. In order to support inter-organizational process, the notion of contract based on artifact-centric approach is introduced. Next, the extended system so called artifactcentric coordination system is developed based on the artifact centric process system. Then, a test case is used to test our system and it turns out that the system is able to execute and manage a business process across organization. Moreover, Monitoring and tracking information can be queried from a log file during the process execution.