Distributed process execution in collaborative networks

Processes are a central entity in enterprise collaboration. Collaborative processes need to be executed and coordinated in a distributed computational platform where computers are connected through heterogeneous networks and systems. Life cycle management of such collaborative processes requires a framework able to handle their diversity based on different computational and communication requirements. This paper proposes a rational for such framework, points out key requirements and proposes a strategy for a supporting technological infrastructure. Beyond the portability of collaborative process definitions among different technological bindings, a framework to handle different life cycle phases of those definitions is presented and discussed.     

BPEL4WS协议中数据共享问题的研究

针对BPEL4WS协议在流程执行中数据共享问题处理上的不足,对协议的内容进行了拓展,提出“容器池”概念,假设了它的构建模型。在实际例子中进行应用和分析,分别探讨了在同一流程下数据共享和不同流程下数据共享的两种应用情形。     

面向跨组织业务流程的服务组合策略

动态服务组合为跨组织业务流程的快速开发提供了重要技术支撑.传统的集中规划的组合方式不能很好适应开放环境所提要求.提出一种基于分布式层次任务网络的服务组合策略,分析了实现该策略的组件的结构和功能,并定义组件间的Web服务接口,给出该策略下跨组织流程的开发方式,并以应用实例说明该策略对开放组织之间业务流程开发的有效支持.     

Quality of service for workflows and web service processes

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) have been used to support various types of business processes for more than a decade now. In workflows or Web processes for e-commerce and Web service applications, suppliers and customers define a binding agreement or contract between the two parties, specifying quality of service (QoS) items such as products or services to be delivered, deadlines, quality of products, and cost of services. The management of QoS metrics directly impacts the success of organizations participating in e-commerce. Therefore, when services or products are created or managed using workflows or Web processes, the underlying workflow engine must accept the specifications and be able to estimate, monitor, and control the QoS rendered to customers. In this paper, we present a predictive QoS model that makes it possible to compute the quality of service for workflows automatically based on atomic task QoS attributes. We also present the implementation of our QoS model for the METEOR workflow system. We describe the components that have been changed or added, and discuss how they interact to enable the management of QoS.     

Incorporating structural improvement into resource allocation for business process execution planning

Resource management has been recognised as an important topic for business process execution for a long time. Most existing works on resource allocation for business processes simply assume that the structure of a business process is always fixed, and therefore do not discuss the possibility of optimising resource allocation by adapting process structures to actual resource situations. To fill this gap, we propose a resource optimisation approach of improving process structures according to resource situations and thereby pursuing the best resource utilisation efficiency. This approach comprises a role‐based business process model for resource allocation and the strategies for optimising resource allocation in conjunction with a business process improvement. A set of heuristic rules are established to guide the resource allocation for the purposes of preventing resource conflicts, shortening the total execution time, minimising the total cost, etc. Particular algorithms are also developed to implement the resource allocation according to these rules. In addition, an experimental study is conducted to discuss the incorporation of business process improvement into resource allocation for optimal process execution. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于服务QoS执行信息的Web服务推荐研究

基于服务的非功能（QoS）特性进行服务发现是面向服务计算领域的一个研究热点。为了克服服务QoS难以获取且动态变化的特点,提出一种基于已往QoS执行信息的Web服务推荐方法。首先给出一种可以方便记录QoS执行信息的系统框架;然后描述了基于时间加权的服务推荐的匹配算法;实验结果表明该推荐方法是可行和有效的。     

Execution system for distributed business processes in a virtual enterprise

New cooperative approaches for manufacturing and service industries, as represented by the virtual enterprise paradigm, are enabled by the recent advances in communication technologies, computer networks, and logistics. The implantation of this paradigm requires the design and development of a flexible execution environment to support the distributed business processes that materialize the cooperation in a network of enterprises. A configurable architecture for such execution system is proposed focusing the support for multi-level process coordination. A set of examples to illustrate the adopted concepts and developed tools are discussed.     

A probabilistic approach to modeling and estimating the QoS of web-services-based workflows

Web services promise to become a key enabling technology for B2B e-commerce. One of the most-touted features of Web services is their capability to recursively construct a Web service as a workflow of other existing Web services. The quality of service (QoS) of Web-services-based workflows may be an essential determinant when selecting constituent Web services and determining the service-level agreement with users. To make such a selection possible, it is essential to estimate the QoS of a WS workflow based on the QoSs of its constituent WSs. In the context of WS workflow, this estimation can be made by a method called QoS aggregation. While most of the existing work on QoS aggregation treats the QoS as a deterministic value, we argue that due to some uncertainty related to a WS, it is more realistic to model its QoS as a random variable, and estimate the QoS of a WS workflow probabilistically. In this paper, we identify a set of QoS metrics in the context of WS workflows, and propose a unified probabilistic model for describing QoS values of a broader spectrum of atomic and composite Web services. Emulation data are used to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed approach.     

基于动态需求服务反馈的 Web 业务可信度协同计算

针对 Web 服务和 Web 业务的选择问题,提出一种基于动态需求服务反馈的 Web 业务可信度协同计算算法,动态分析了用户的 Web 服务选择和组合问题,采用了基于用户满意度信息的服务反馈模型来解决 Web 服务的选择问题,从而防止 Web 业务选择到服务质量较差的服务类型。在 Web 业务的选择上采用了基于可信度计算的方法,可信度大小由业务信誉度、反馈能力、服务信任度三方面决定,通过可信度大小的比较来选择最佳的 Web 业务。实验仿真结果表明,该算法在选择最佳的 Web 服务和 Web 业务上具有较高的精确度,尤其在选择最佳 Web 服务的精确率上相比对比算法高出11％以上。     

Per-flow optimal service selection for Web services based processes

With the development of the Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) paradigm, flexible business processes can be defined from independently developed services. Multiple services corresponding to the same functionality but characterized by different Quality of Service (QoS) attributes can be offered by different service providers and the best set of Web services can be selected at run-time in order to maximize the QoS for end users.In the literature many approaches have been proposed for the optimal service selection which is usually performed on a per-request basis, i.e., considering a single process invocation. In this paper we propose a broker-based framework which solves the optimal service selection on a per-flow basis. Multiple applications, defined as different BPEL processes are considered at the same time and multiple requests to the same process are optimized concurrently.Service selection is formulated as a constrained non-linear multi-criteria optimization problem and an heuristic algorithm is proposed to determine a scalable and efficient solution.A comparison with top performing state-of-the-art approaches for a number of different scenarios of interest is also provided. Results show that the overall optimization time reduction which can be achieved by our solution is proportional to the system incoming workload. Order of magnitudes optimization time improvements can be obtained if compared to alternative methods. Moreover, our solution is robust to workload prediction uncertainty.     

Modeling workflow activities for collaborative process planning with product lifecycle management tools

Process planning activities are critical in manu- facturing distributed environments where different companies need to collaborate in product development. In this work, we propose a workflow model for a collaborative process planning environment in which original equipment manufacturer and suppliers companies interact with the help of Product Lifecycle Management and CAD/CAM tools. The proposed workflow model establishes the different activities, the information flows and the different stages that must be followed by all the participants. A pilot implementation has been made in order to validate the model in a realistic industrial scenario.     

基于动态QoS的Web服务组合

在Web服务组合中,现行的几种QoS衡量标准都将重点放在单个Web服务本身的质量上,而忽视了Web服务动态特性、组合特性以及服务组合中的网络特性。另外,在诸多服务组合的算法中,都只是强调组合服务的总体质量,却忽略了用户对某些质量属性的约束条件,从而导致服务重计算问题经常发生。为此,考虑了服务动态特性以及服务间的协作关系对组合服务质量的影响,提出了动态QoS模型;同时,综合了用户的质量约束以及组合服务的整体质量,将用户的质量约束引入服务组合流程中。最后通过实验证实了所提出的动态QoS模型能够根据服务实体的实时情况计算服务质量,同时将用户的质量约束引入服务组合流程中,有效地避免了服务重计算问题。     

Context aware exception handling in business process execution language

ContextFault handling represents a very important aspect of business process functioning. However, fault handling has thus far been solved statically, requiring the definition of fault handlers and handling logic to be defined at design time, which requires a great deal of effort, is error-prone and relatively difficult to maintain and extend. It is sometimes even impossible to define all fault handlers at design time.ObjectiveTo address this issue, we describe a novel context-aware architecture for fault handling in executable business process, which enables dynamic fault handling during business process execution.MethodWe performed analysis of existing fault handling disadvantages of WS-BPEL. We designed the artifact which complements existing statically defined fault handling in such a way that faults can be defined dynamically during business process run-time. We evaluated the artifact with analysis of system performance and performed a comparison against a set of well known workflow exception handling patterns.ResultsWe designed an artifact, that comprises an Observer component, Exception Handler Bus, Exception Knowledge Base and Solution Repository. A system performance analysis shows a significantly decreased repair time with the use of context aware activities. We proved that the designed artifact extends the range of supported workflow exception handling patterns.ConclusionThe artifact presented in this research considerably improves static fault handling, as it enables the dynamic fault resolution of semantically similar faults with continuous enhancement of fault handling in run-time. It also results in broader support of workflow exception handling patterns.     

基于协同过滤的个性化Web服务选择方法

对传统的Web服务选择算法进行分析,并指出其在动态环境下存在的问题。为了解决该问题,提出了基于协同过滤算法的个性化Web服务选择方法,并设计了一个动态的Web服务选择架构,架构使用协同过滤算法对Web服务的服务质量(QoS)值进行预测并选择最优的Web服务以满足用户的需求。使用150万条真实Web服务的QoS数据与其他4类算法进行了对比实验,结果表明所提方法的可行性和准确性。     

一种基于反馈控制的Web服务组合执行引擎设计

在Web服务组合执行引擎中解耦流程执行和成分Web服务调用,设计和实施了带有双控制反馈控制环的流程执行结构,反馈控制环分别位于流程执行器与服务代理之上。仿真结果表明：解耦流程执行和成分Web服务调用提高了引擎资源的使用效率,增加了流程执行的并发性,提高了引擎的吞吐量;引入QoS反馈控制结构,使得引擎在组合服务负荷变化时,可为不同的请求服务等级提供服务响应时间保障。     

基于业务规则的Web服务整合

Web服务实现了Internet环境下企业应用的松散耦合与集成,使企业可以方便地集成现有的应用和部署新的应用。当前,已有不少Web服务整合模型提出,但大多忽视了业务规则在模型中的重要作用。为此提出了一个基于结构化的业务规则的Web服务整合模型来实现业务过程的动态整合,并将详细阐述整合模型所需的基本元素和结构化业务规则思想,以及Web服务整合的过程。     

Adaptive integration activity management for on demand business process collaboration

Today businesses are interacting and collaborating more often in the context of a business value chain involving a variety of partners to deliver products and services. Business to business (B2B) connectivity, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and general business collaboration processes are becoming more critical in operating and managing efficient enterprises. The required level of inter and intra enterprise integration is generally a large undertaking and involves substantial development and customization efforts. In this paper, we propose an adaptive integration activity management approach based on web services technologies to reduce code changes associated with business process integration in a distributed collaboration environment. Specifically, we present a concept of activity chain to capture non-deterministic process flows as well as deterministic process flows in a uniform manner. Then an Activity Ontology is introduced to capture the integration requirements that include adaptation behaviors, action properties, business rules, and access control policy references. The unique ontology representation and management of the integration activities provides a uniform way to integrate additional internal and external business applications to reduce the need for pre-defined and hard-wired integration methods and to minimize code changes to existing components in an existing business collaboration and integration (B2B/EAI) infrastructure. In addition, a Petri-Net modeling exercise of the proposed integration activity management is performed to help better understand the actual system and improve the system design beforehand.     

基于树型二重结构编码遗传算法的服务选择

提出了Web服务语法业务流程树的概念,并结合基于QoS的Web服务全局选择的特点,研究了一种用于组合服务QoS优化的基于树型二重结构编码的遗传算法GATD。该方法建立在服务语法业务流程树先序遍历序列编码的基础上,采用二重编码方法处理用户的QoS约束条件,不仅能够有效地选择出满足用户QoS需求的服务资源,而且可以较好地支持服务运行时快速再规划。     

A conceptual framework for understanding business processes and business process modelling

It is increasingly common to describe organizations as sets of business processes that can be analysed and improved by approaches such as business process modelling. Successful business process modelling relies on an adequate view of the nature of business processes, but there is a surprising divergence of opinion about the nature of these processes. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to organize different views of business processes under four headings. It also aims at providing an integrated discussion of the different streams of thought, their strengths and limitations, within business process modelling. It argues that the multifaceted nature of business processes calls for pluralistic and multidisciplinary modelling approaches.     

A trustworthy QoS-based collaborative filtering approach for web service discovery

Many network services which process a large quantity of data and knowledge are available in the distributed network environment, and provide applications to users based on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web services technology. Therefore, a useful web service discovery approach for data and knowledge discovery process in the complex network environment is a very significant issue. Using the traditional keyword-based search method, users find it difficult to choose the best web services from those with similar functionalities. In addition, in an untrustworthy real world environment, the QoS-based service discovery approach cannot verify the correctness of the web services’ Quality of Service (QoS) values, since such values guaranteed by a service provider are different from the real ones. This work proposes a trustworthy two-phase web service discovery mechanism based on QoS and collaborative filtering, which discovers and recommends the needed web services effectively for users in the distributed environment, and also solves the problem of services with incorrect QoS information. In the experiment, the theoretical analysis and simulation experiment results show that the proposed method can accurately recommend the needed services to users, and improve the recommendation quality.