A Three-Level Framework for Process and Data Management of Complex E-Services

Abstract

Service outsourcing is the business paradigm in which an organization has part of its business process performed by a service provider. In dynamic markets, service providers can be selected on the fly during process enactment. The cooperation between the parties is specified in a dynamically made electronic contract. This contract includes a process specification that is tailored towards service brokering and cross-organizational process enactment and, hence, has to conform to market and specification standards. Process enactment, however, relies on intra-organizational process specifications that have to comply with the infrastructure available in an organization for process and data management. In this paper, we present a three-level process and data specification framework for dynamic contract-based outsourcing of complex services. We focus on services with an externally visible control flow, as opposed to simple, black-box web services. The framework relates the two process specification levels through a third, conceptual level. This approach is inspired by the well-known ANSI-SPARC model for data management. We discuss an abstract architecture for dynamic service outsourcing based on the three-level framework. We show how the framework and architecture can be placed in the context of existing infrastructures for cross-organizational process support. As service outsourcing is used more and more for core business processes requiring reliable execution, we pay special attention to transaction management.

An Approach to Temporal-Aware Procurement of Web Services

“…In general, they only allow to define an unique validity period for an entire demand or offer. Fortunately, other proposals do allow to assign a validity period to every condition of a demand or an offer, such as the IBM WSLA Web Services Level Agreement language [6,11] and the WSOL Web Service Offerings Language [23]. The HP WSML Web Services Level Agreement Management language [19] allows to specify both a single validity period for the entire agreement and also a periodic temporal interval to every condition.…”

Constructing customized process views

“…There, an external level process model was specified in a contract, but no support was provided for constructing this external process model, i.e., the CrossFlow approach relies on manual construction of external process views. In follow-up research, Grefen et al [15] defined a three-level framework for process outsourcing. In this work, also a distinction between external and internal models is made, but only abstract construction rules are presented.…”

“…However, process-oriented collaboration in a network can only occur if partners reveal some details of their business processes to the network. These revealed details can be captured in an external or public view on the private business process [15]. A public view is like a window through which the network can monitor the operation of an underlying private business process of a partner.…”

Supporting Cross-Organizational Process Control

“…In [4], a three level framework for process specification is proposed, distinguishing external, conceptual, and internal process levels. At the conceptual level, the process specification is technology independent, specifying the process that will be performed by the party.…”