Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering 

About: Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering is an academic conference. The conference publishes majorly in the area(s): Information system & Business process. Over the lifetime, 1902 publications have been published by the conference receiving 45068 citations.

Towards requirements-driven information systems engineering: the Tropos project

Abstract: Information systems of the future will have to perform well within ever-changing organizational enviromnents. Unfortunately, existing software development methodologies (object-oriented, structured or otherwise) have traditionally been inspired by programming concepts, not organizational ones, leading to a semantic gap between the software system and its operational enviromnent. To reduce this gap, we propose a software development methodology named Tropos which is founded on concepts used to model early requirements. Our proposal adopts the i organizational modeling framework, which offers the notions of actor, goal and (actor) dependency, and uses these as a foundation to model early and late requirements, architectural and detailed design. The paper outlines Tropos phases through an e-business example, and sketches a formal language which underlies the methodology and is intended to support formal analysis. The methodology seems to complement well proposals for agent-oriented programming platforms.

Adaptive and Dynamic Service Composition in eFlow

Abstract: E-Services are typically delivered point-to-point. However, the e-service environment creates the opportunity for providing value-added, integrated services, which are delivered by composing existing e-services. In order to enable organizations to pursue this business opportunity we have developed eFlow, a system that supports the specification, enactment, and management of composite e-services, modeled as processes that are enacted by a service process engine. Composite e-services have to cope with a highly dynamic business environment in terms of services and service providers. In addition, the increased competition forces companies to provide customized services to better satisfy the needs of every individual customer. Ideally, service processes should be able to transparently adapt to changes in the environment and to the needs of different customers with minimal or no user intervention. In addition, it should be possible to dynamically modify service process definitions in a simple and effective way to manage cases where user intervention is indeed required. In this paper we show how eFlow achieves these goals.

Automated reasoning on feature models

Abstract: Software Product Line (SPL) Engineering has proved to be an effective method for software production. However, in the SPL community it is well recognized that variability in SPLs is increasing by the thousands. Hence, an automatic support is needed to deal with variability in SPL. Most of the current proposals for automatic reasoning on SPL are not devised to cope with extra–functional features. In this paper we introduce a proposal to model and reason on an SPL using constraint programming. We take into account functional and extra–functional features, improve current proposals and present a running, yet feasible implementation.

Analyzing process models using graph reduction techniques

Abstract: The foundation of a process model lies in its structural specifications. Using a generic process modeling language for workflows, we show how a structural specification may contain deadlock and lack of synchronization conflicts that could compromise the correct execution of workflows. In general, identification of such conflicts is a computationally complex problem and requires development of effective algorithms specific for the target modeling language. We present a visual verification approach and algorithm that employs a set of graph reduction rules to identify structural conflicts in process models for the given workflow modeling language. We also provide insights into the correctness and complexity of the reduction process. Finally, we show how the reduction algorithm may be used to count possible instance subgraphs of a correct process model. The main contribution of the paper is a new technique for satisfying well-defined correctness criteria in process models. © 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Workflow resource patterns: identification, representation and tool support

Abstract: In the main, the attention of workflow researchers and workflow developers has focussed on the process perspective, i.e., control-flow. As a result, issues associated with the resource perspective, i.e., the people and machines actually doing the work, have been largely neglected. Although the process perspective is of most significance, appropriate consideration of the resource perspective is essential for successful implementation of workflow technology. Previous work has identified recurring, generic constructs in the control-flow and data perspectives, and presented them in the form of control-flow and data patterns. The next logical step is to describe workflow resource patterns that capture the various ways in which resources are represented and utilised in workflows. These patterns include a number of distinct groupings such as push patterns (“the system pushes work to a worker”) and pull patterns (“the worker pulls work from the system”) to describe the many ways in which work can be distributed. By delineating these patterns in a form that is independent of specific workflow technologies and modelling languages, we are able to provide a comprehensive treatment of the resource perspective and we subsequently use these patterns as the basis for a detailed comparison of a number of commercially available workflow management systems.