Enterprise Application Integration and Process Modelling

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Enterprise Application Integrationand Process
Modelling
Erik Perjons DSV, KTH/SU
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Why focusing on business processes?

• re-engineering the business processes to make
  them more effective/efficient

• easy to understand for non-technical people

• discover and adopt to changed customer demands

• automate the activities in business processes

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Stove pipe problem
Production
Market
Shipment
Purchase
Customer service
Management
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Business processes cross departments
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Solution Integrated IT systems
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Why problem integrating IT systems?

• Different platforms, programming languages, and
  formats
• No interfaces
• Legacy systems with no documentation
• Different semantics in the systems (different
  meanings of e.g. customer, region,
  product)
• Need of a routing mechanism

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Problem Constantly changing business processes
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Integration solutions

• ERP and Enterprise systems
• - replace existing IT systems with
• a new one
• EAI middleware
• - integrate existing IT systems
• Electronic collaboration solutions (B2B
  solutions)
• - integrate the suppliers and customers
  systems
• Data warehousing
• - extract some data from existing IT systems
  and load it into a new system for decision
  support

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ERP systems/Enterprise systems
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Integration solutions

• ERP and Enterprise systems
• - replace existing IT systems with a new one
• EAI middleware
• - integrate existing IT systems (RPC,
  CORBA, XML, Message Broker, BPMS)
• Electronic collaboration solutions (B2B
  solutions)
• - integrate the suppliers and customers
  systems
• Data warehousing
• - extract some data from existing IT systems
  and load it into a new system for decision
  support

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EAI Point-to-Point solutions
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EAI Many-to-Many solutions
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Message Brokers and BPMS
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Business Process Management Systems (BPMS)

also called Process Brokers, Process Automation
Systems, Workflow Management Systems
- directly executable business models - support
process design (modelling), execution,
analysis, simulation and optimisation of
business processes - automate the business
processes, or the information flow
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Categorisation of Business Process Modelling
Languages

• Static-oriented languages
• visualise the input and output from activities,
  but not the logical order/time, e.g. IDEF0, data
  flow diagram
• Activity-oriented languages
• decribes which activities follows and precede
  another in a process, e.g EPC, UML activity
  diagram
• State-oriented languages
• describes which states follow and precede another
  in a process, e.g UML state diagram
• Communication oriented languages
• - focus on the interaction between prople and
  systems, and between systems, e.g UML sequence
  diagram, BML, SDL

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Basic process language concepts

• Four basic process language concepts, which have
  the following intuitive meaning

• A time point is an instant in time, not further
  decomposible
• An event is an noteworthy occurence
• A state shows the condition of a process and can
  be represented in several way, e.g. as a set of
  attribute values
• A activity is something that is performed in a
  process

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Different meaning of basic terms

• Two examples (there are more)

State
State
State
State
State
State
Activity
Activity
Event
Event
Time points
Time points
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Meta models and reference meta model

RosemannGreen, 2002
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Data flow diagram
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UML Activity Diagram
FowlerScott, 1997
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UML State Diagram
FowlerScott, 1997
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Business Modelling Language (BML)
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Business Modelling Language (BML)
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Business Modelling Language (BML)
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Process Broker project

• The purpose of the project is to investige BPMS
  (Process Brokers), in particular
• business process modelling languages
• method for application and process
  integration

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Process Broker project - Telecom case
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Vita Nova project
The purpose of the project is to investige the
potential of BPMS in Health and Medical
Services DSVs assignment is to develop a
framework for evaluating business processes
models, BPMS and methods for integrating
business processes
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Loosely-Structured Business Processes project

• The purpose of the project is to investige BPMS
  for loosely-structured business processes
• focused on goal and state modelling
• try to define patterns for such business
  processes
• case studies decision-making and lobbying

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ebXML and EC4 project
- ebXML is a global standard developed by
UN/CEFACT and OASIS - EC4 stands for Electronic
Commerce and Collaboration Center - aims at
disseminate knowledge about electronic commerce
and collaboration among researchers, students and
SME
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Integration solutions

• ERP and Enterprise systems
• - replace existing IT systems with a new one
• EAI middleware
• - integrate existing IT systems
• Electronic collaboration solutions (B2B
  solutions)
• - integrate the suppliers and
• customers systems
• Data warehousing
• - extract some data from existing IT systems
  and load it into a new system for decision
  support

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B2B - Electronic CollaborationIntegration
Shipment
Market
Production
Customer service
Management
Purchase
Suppliers
Customers
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Business Processes spanning several organisations
Company 1
P1.3
P1.1
P1.4
P1.2
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ebXML Electronic CollaborationIntegration Levels
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SOA
Web services and CORBA are different
implementations of Service Oriented Architecture
(SOA)
Service Broker
Find
Publish
Service Requestor
Service Provider
Request Bind
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Integration solutions

• ERP and Enterprise systems
• - replace existing IT systems with a new one
• EAI middleware
• - integrate existing IT systems
• Electronic collaboration solutions (B2B
  solutions)
• - integrate the suppliers and customers
  systems
• Data warehousing
• - extract some data from existing IT systems
  and load it into a new system for decision
  support

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Data warehousing architecture
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Data warehousing definition
Data warehousing is a collection of decision
support technologies, aimed at enabling the
knowledge worker (executive, manager, analyst) to
make better and faster decisions.
ChaundhuriDayal, 1997