Data & Knowledge Engineering 52 (2005) 1–3 www.elsevier.com/locate/datak
Guest editorial
Collaborative business process technologies Maria E. Orlowska, Shazia Sadiq
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School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia Available online 23 August 2004
1. Introduction Tremendous developments in data storing, processing and communication over the last two decades have made unprecedented impact on how most enterprises operate, develop future business strategies and deal with day to day operations. Businesses are increasingly moving towards extensive automation of their private and public processes. This automation takes the form of complex interactions between heterogeneous and autonomous systems within the enterprise and often cross multiple organizations. Controlling these complex interactions in order to effectively manage collaborative business processes is known to be a critical yet difficult problem using current technology solutions. Consequently, the areas of research are multi-faceted ranging from security, reliability and transactional support, quality of service guarantees, process validation and optimisation, to data modelling, repository management, and semantic integrity of terminology used. Workflow Management Systems delivered effectively in the area of process enforcement, offering a clear separation of business process logic from component applications involved in process execution, thereby responding to the well-established need for application integration. The complementary role of workflow systems in supporting advanced database functions, offered a powerful environment for information systems architects. It is an observed phenomenon that a new IT solution often triggers additional, and even more advanced user requirements, which probably would not be discovered if the current systems functionality would not be so widely available. This pattern can be clearly observed in the context of workflow technology evolution. It is time now for an even more advanced and rich level of integration facilities. It should be possible to form new business processes out of pre-existing fully operational workflows at different sites for various business partners with process owner controlled levels of data disclosure, and *
Corresponding author. E-mail addresses:
[email protected] (M.E. Orlowska),
[email protected] (S. Sadiq).
0169-023X/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.datak.2004.07.002
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Guest editorial / Data & Knowledge Engineering 52 (2005) 1–3
most importantly, practically no impact on the component applications. Integration technologies such as brokers, application adapters, portals and messaging are fundamental elements of a collaborative business process environment. For this wide-spread enterprise application integration and/or business to business (B2B) integration to become a reality, we need common architectures and open standards to support it. The industry is currently flooded with initiatives and proposals towards e-business standards. These standards encompass trading partner agreements, business process specification, application integration, and network protocols. The domain of collaborative business processes has already reached a mature stage with a substantial body of theoretical and practical advances. Clearly data and knowledge engineering is a fundamental aspect of technology solutions supporting collaborative business processes, thus deserving a special issue of this journal.
2. Papers in this special issue This issue presents five papers, selected through a rigorous review process, from 22 submissions. The review process consisted of a first round of reviews by a program committee (listed below), and followed by a second round of PC discussions on the top ranked eight submissions. It was then ensured by the issue editors that the final five selected papers were revised incorporating the reviewerÕs feedback. The first paper by Bjo¨rn Deckers et al. presents a system for experience management and conflict resolution for dealing with problems while executing process models. Incorporating experience in process modelling is an essential and oft neglected aspect of business process management. The presented system indigo not only provides the facility for moderation and collaboration, but also builds an electronic experience base, for future problems. Three interesting case studies are presented, and demonstrated through the technical infrastructure of indiGo. The paper on eMarketplaces for Enterprise and Cross Enterprise Integration by Hamada Ghenniwa, Michael Huhns, and Weiming Shen presents a flexible inter-enterprise collaboration framework. Although the reality of eMarketplaces is arguable, this paper presents a practical architecture BCKOA (Business Centric Knowledge Oriented Architecture) using current technologies. The proposed component acts as a mediator between domain services, a domain ontology and the distributed computing infrastructure. Document management is central to many collaborative applications typical in business process management. Concept and prototype of a collaborative business process environment for document processing by Thomas B. Hodel-Widmer and Klaus R. Dittrich presents a novel approach to collaborative document editing based on a strong native database support. Of special relevance is the section on collaborative text manipulations which provides a systematic and comprehensive discussion on the problems and potential solutions in this area. Gu¨nter Preuner and Michael SchreflÕs paper proposes a requester-centered approach to the composition of business processes from available services. A formal approach using Object/Behaviour Diagrams (OBDs) is used, which allows the definition of precise correctness criteria, essential to ensure that composite services actually meet the requirements. The distinctive feature of this work is that the service requester does not simply invoke an external service, but can also influence the execution of the activities provided by the service.
Guest editorial / Data & Knowledge Engineering 52 (2005) 1–3
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Satwik Seshasai, Amar Gupta, and Ashwani Kumar present a knowledge engineering perspective on business process design. A formal model for specification of utility and cost factors associated with stakeholder choices is presented, thereby enhancing the various phases of knowledge exchange and eventually aiming towards an improved and successful process design. Although the five papers all relate to the same domain of consideration, they also present unique solutions to specific aspects of collaborative business process technologies. We hope that the special issue will enhance reader understanding of current research approaches and in turn present motivation for new developments in the evolving area of collaborative business process management. We would like to thank all the authors who expressed interest in this special issue and submitted their work. We would also like to thank the DKE Editor, Prof. Dr. Reind van de Riet for his support and guidance, and the members of the program committee for their valuable reviews and feedback, which ensured a high quality journal issue: Wil van der Aalst, Eindhoven University of Technology; Gustavo Alonso, Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH); Christoph Bussler, Oracle Corporation; Fabio Casati, HP Labs; Shing-Chi Cheung, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Peter Dadam, University of Ulm; Umeshwar Dayal, HP Labs; Johann Eder, Universita¨t Klagenfurt; Igor Hawryszkiewycz, University of Technology, Sydney; Stephan Jablonski, University of Erlangen-Nurnberg; Keith Jeffery, CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory; Ulrich Keil, SAP AG; Myoung Ho Kim, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; Michele Missikoff, IASI-CNR; Mike P. Papazoglou, Tilburg University; Barbera Pernicci, Politecnico di Milano; Katsumi Tanaka, Kyoto University; Zahir Tari, RMIT University. Maria E. Orlowska is a professor in Information Systems, Head of Data and Knowledge Engineering Group and Deputy Head of the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, distinguished researcher at the Distributed Systems Technology Centre, and serves on the editorial board of several international journals, as well as program committee of major conferences in databases. Her research interests include workflow systems, eBusiness technology, business process modelling and verification, high performance OLTP systems, data mining, and distributed/integrated databases.
Dr. Shazia Sadiq is senior lecturer at the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland. Her research interests include workflow systems, specifically dynamic workflows, message based business process technologies, conceptual modelling, and e-Learning.
