Web Services Navigator: Visualizing the execution of Web Services

Management for Professionals

2015

Abstract. Increasingly organizations are using process mining to understand the way that operational processes are executed. Process mining can be used to systematically drive innovation in a digitalized world. Next to the automated discovery of the real underlying process, there are process-mining techniques to analyze bottlenecks, to uncover hidden inefficiencies, to check compliance, to explain deviations, to predict performance, and to guide users towards "better" processes. Dozens (if not hundreds) of process-mining techniques are available and their value has been proven in many case studies. However, process mining stands or falls with the availability of event logs. Existing techniques assume that events are clearly defined and refer to precisely one case (i.e. process instance) and one activity (i.e., step in the process). Although there are systems that directly generate such event logs (e.g., BPM/WFM systems), most information systems do not record events explicitly. Cases and activities only exist implicitly. However, when creating or using process models "raw data" need to be linked to cases and activities. This paper uses a novel perspective to conceptualize a database view on event data. Starting from a class model and corresponding object models it is shown that events correspond to the creation, deletion, or modification of objects and relations. The key idea is that events leave footprints by changing the underlying database. Based on this an approach is described that scopes, binds, and classifies data to create "flat" event logs that can be analyzed using traditional process-mining techniques.

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extracting Event Data from Databases to Unleash Process Mining

Management for Professionals

2015

“…In [7] and [11] various interaction and correlation patterns are described. In [17] a technique is presented for correlating messages with the goal to visualize the execution of web services. In [16] so-called operating guidelines are exploited for conformance checking.…”

Section: Related Work On Service Miningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges in Service Mining: Record, Check, Discover

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

2013

Abstract. Process mining aims to discover, monitor and improve real processes by extracting knowledge from event logs abundantly available in today's information systems. Although process mining has been applied in hundreds of organizations and process mining techniques have been embedded in a variety of commercial tools, to date these techniques have rarely been used for analyzing web services. One of the obvious reasons is that cross-organizational event data cannot be shared easily. However, (1) messages exchanged between services tend to be structured, (2) service-orientation continues to be the predominant implementation paradigm, and (3) the most substantial efficiency gains can often only be achieved across different organizations. Hence, there are many possible applications for service mining, i.e., applying process mining techniques to services. If messages are recorded, then one can discover a process describing interactions between services. If, in addition, descriptive or normative models are available, one can use process mining to check conformance and highlight performance problems. This extended abstract aims to provide pointers to ongoing work on service mining and lists some of the main challenges in this emerging field.

“…So far, the main focus has been on the analysis of processes inside single organizations. The few publications on process mining in an inter-organizational context tend to focus on the area of Web services [20,22,6,13,15,17]. For example, in [20] conformance checking techniques are applied to the message logs of Oracle BPEL.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In [17], a technique is presented for correlating messages with the goal to visualize the execution of Web services.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mining Inter-organizational Business Process Models from EDI Messages: A Case Study from the Automotive Sector

Engel

Notes on Numerical Fluid Mechanics and Multidisciplinary Design

Zapletal

et al. 2012

Abstract. Traditional standards for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), such as EDIFACT and ANSI X12, have been employed in Business-toBusiness (B2B) e-commerce for decades. Due to their wide industry coverage and long-standing establishment, they will presumably continue to play an important role for some time. EDI systems are typically not "process-aware", i.e., messages are standardized but processes simply "emerge". However, to improve performance and to enhance the control, it is important to understand and analyze the "real" processes supported by these systems. In the case study presented in this paper we uncover the inter-organizational business processes of an automotive supplier company by analyzing the EDIFACT messages that it receives from its business partners. We start by transforming a set of observed messages to an event log, which requires that the individual messages are correlated to process instances. Thereby, we make use of the specific structure of EDIFACT messages. Then we apply process mining techniques to uncover the inter-organizational business processes. Our results show that inter-organizational business process models can be derived by analyzing EDI messages that are exchanged in a network of organizations.