Abstract
The issue of business process variants management has been addressed several times already. However new situations with their own specific arise all the time, and proper solutions need to be developed in order to address such specific context. Process variants management at eBay is an example of such a situation. Variants are imposed by business facts, and only for a single process there could be more than 8000 variants. In this paper we introduce an ontology based approach to address the management of business process variants. The ontology based solution relates business context with reusable process flow elements, thus binding the reason for which a variant has been introduced with the variant itself. Variants can be later compared and queried for based on this relationship. In such a context, first, one has to model for reuse to be able to model with reuse. In order to provide a complete process variants management approach, the ontology based solution is complemented by an inheritance mechanism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Rosemann, M., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: A configurable reference modeling language. Inf. Sys. 32(1) (2007)
Reijers, H., Mans, R., van der Toorn, R.: Improved model management with aggregated business process models. DKE 68(2) (2009)
OMG: Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). FTF Beta 1 for Version 2.0. (August 2009), http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0
Weske, M.: Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Lu, R., Sadiq, S., Governatori, G., Yang, X.: Defining Adaptation Constraints for Business Process Variants. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Business Information Systems (BIS 2009), pp. 145–156 (2009)
Lu, R., Sadiq, S., Governatori, G.: On Managing Business Processes Variants. Data & Knowledge Engineering 68(7), 642–664 (2009)
van der Aalst, W., Weijters, A., Maruster, L.: Workflow Mining: Discovering Process Models from Event Logs. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 16(9), 1128–1142 (2004)
Sommerville, I.: Software Engineering, vol. 8. Addison Wesley, Reading (2007)
de Almeida Falbo, R., Guizzardi, G., Duarte, K.C., Natali, A.C.C.: Developing Software for and with Reuse: An Ontological Approach. In: Proceedings of the ACIS International Conference on Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, e-Business and Applications (CSITeA 2002), Foz do Iguacu, Brazil (2002)
Coutaz, J., Crowley, J.L., Dobson, S., Garlan, D.: Context is key. Communications of the ACM 48(3), 49–53 (2005)
Dey, A.K., Abowd, G.D.: Towards a better understanding of context and context-awareness. Technical Report GIT-GVU-99-22, Georgia Institute of Technology (1999)
Rosemann, M., Recker, J., Flender, C.: Contextualisation of Business Processes. International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management 3(1), 47–60 (2008)
Guarino, N.: Formal Ontology and Information Systems. In: Proceedings of FOIS 1998, Trento, Italy, June 6-8, pp. 3–15. IOS Press, Amsterdam (1998)
Uschold, M., Jasper, R.: A Framework for Understanding and Classifying Ontology Applications. In: Proceedings of the IJCAI 1999 workshop on Ontologies and Problem-Solving Methods (KRR5), Stockholm, Sweden (1999)
Guizzardi, G.: Ontological Foundations for Structural Conceptual Models. PhD thesis, Telematics Instituut, Enschede, The Netherlands, Telematica Instituut Fundamental Research Series No. 15, ISBN 90-75176-81-3 (2005)
OMG: UML 2.0 superstructure specification (2005), http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.0/Superstructure/PDF/
Gosling, J., Joy, B., Steele, G., Bracha, G.: The Java Language Specification, 3rd edn. Addison-Wesley, Reading (2005)
Bracha, G., Cook, W.: Mixin-based inheritance. In: Proceedings of the European Conference on Object Oriented Programming Systems Languages and Applications (OOPSLA 1990), pp. 303–311. ACM, New York (1990)
Estublier, J., Casallas, R.: The Adele Software Configuration Manager. In: Configuration Management. Trends in Software. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester (1994)
Tryggeseth, E., Gulla, B., Conradi, R.: Modelling Systems with Variability using the PROTEUS Configuration Language. In: Proceedings of the Int. Conference on Software Configuration Management (1995)
Turkay, E., Gokhale, A., Natarajan, B.: Addressing the Middleware Configuration Challenges using Model-based Techniques. In: Proceedings of the 42nd Annual ACM Southeast Regional Conference (2004)
Batory, D., Geraci, B.: Composition Validation and Subjectivity in GenVoca Generators. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 23(2) (1997)
Czarnecki, K., Helsen, S., Eisenecker, U.: Formalizing Cardinality-Based Feature Models and Their Specialization. Software Process: Improvement and Practice 10(1) (2005)
Schobbens, P., Heymans, P., Trigaux, J.: Feature Diagrams: A Survey and a Formal Semantics. In: RE (2006)
Baier, T., Pascalau, E., Mendling, J.: On the Suitability of Aggregated and Configurable Business Process Models. In: Nurcan, S., Ukor, R. (eds.) BPMDS 2010 and EMMSAD 2010. LNBIP, vol. 50, pp. 108–119. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
van der Aalst, W., Basten, T.: Inheritance of Workflows: An approach to tackling problems related to change. Computing Science Report 99(6) (1999)
Basten, T., van der Aalst, W.: Inheritance of Behavior. Computing Science Report 99(17) (1999)
Rosa, M.L.: Managing Variability in Process-Aware Information Systems. PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia (2009)
Puhlmann, F., Schnieders, A., Weiland, J., Weske, M.: Variability mechanisms for process models. Technical Report 17/2005, Hasso-Plattner-Institut (June 2005)
Schnieders, A., Puhlmann, F.: Variability Mechanisms in E-Business Process Families. In: Proceddings of the International Conference on Business Information Systems (BIS 2006), LNI, vol. 85, pp. 583–601. GI (2006)
Dadam, P., Reichert, M.: The ADEPT project: a decade of research and development for robust and flexible process support. Challenges and Achievements. Computer Science - Research and Development 23(2), 81–97 (2009)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Pascalau, E., Rath, C. (2010). Managing Business Process Variants at eBay. In: Mendling, J., Weidlich, M., Weske, M. (eds) Business Process Modeling Notation. BPMN 2010. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 67. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16298-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16298-5_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-16297-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-16298-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)