Integrating Process

Integrating Process and Object Life Cycle Modeling in Business Process
Management

In business process management, process models and object life cycles
can be seen as two different views on the same application. Whereas a
process model defines tasks that need to be performed to achieve a
particular business goal, an object life cycle captures the desired
state evolution of a business object during its existence. Modeling
processes and object life cycles side by side can be beneficial during
development, as these two views are complementary, each focusing on a
different aspect of the application. However, the relationship between
these models is not yet well-understood, which is why such integrated
modeling is not adequately supported in the existing tools.

We propose an approach for integrating process and object life cycle
modeling that is based on transformations between these models and
management of their consistency. In this talk, we give an overview of
the approach and discuss different scenarios in which such combined
modeling can be especially beneficial. We also present several
techniques developed as part of our approach, including extraction of
object life cycles from process models and handling of side-effects
during resolution of inconsistencies between process models and object
life cycles. We conclude with a demo of our prototype, Object Life Cycle
Explorer for the IBM WebSphere Business Modeler, released on alphaWorks
earlier this year.

12.8.2008, 14.00 s.t.

Library of the Distributed Systems Group

Argentinierstraße 8, 3. Stock