Algorithms Based on Pattern Analysis for Verification and Adapter Creation for Business Process Composition

Abstract

Abstract. With more automation in inter-organizational supply chains and proliferation of Web services technology, the need for organizations to link their business services and processes is becoming increasingly important. Ideally, such linking must be automated and also possible to do on-the-fly in an ad hoc manner. In this paper, we view business processes in terms of standard patterns, and describe a pattern compatibility matrix and rules that allow us to simplify the task of checking compatibility between two or more processes because these prerequisite rules can be applied to each pattern separately, thus reducing the search space. We give an algorithm for applying these rules to check process compatibility. If two processes are compatible, we determine whether an adapter is required, and if so, a minimal adapter is generated by another algorithm. Two variants of the algorithm (PBA and PBA-MIN) are implemented, and experimental results and comparisons with an existing algorithm are given.

Optimal Adapter Creation for Process Composition in Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Communication

“…Following the pattern matching idea we have introduced, the adapter creation algorithm in Kumar and Shan [2008] works as follows.…”

“…Table I is a pattern compatibility matrix showing compatibility between various pattern pairs in different processes. When processes interoperate, the patterns nested inside them must also interoperate as subprocesses according to this matrix [Kumar and Shan 2008]. …”

“…(4) Use the SP adapter creation algorithm [Kumar and Shan 2008] to generate adapters for matched branches with only SP patterns, and create an adapter for their BlockIDs and their adapters in a BlockAdapters array. These two Blocks then form a block-block pair, in which they are full duals of each other.…”

“…In recent years, this field has started to attract more attention from researchers [Brogi and Popescu 2006;Canal et al 2008;Kumar and Shan 2008;Seguel et al 2010]. However, the existing approaches in literature have a number of limitation.…”

Assessing service protocol adaptability based on protocol reduction and graph search

“…In [39], a formal approach is proposed where component behaviors are described using process algebra, and an adapter is built automatically. In [48], business processes are viewed in terms of standard patterns, and a minimal adapter can be generated if business processes are checked incompatible. Besides, [49] has interesting techniques that support dynamic changes on protocols, and an adapter is built incrementally (instead of being built from scratch).…”