...but their use has been limited. (1) The same is true of the use of process languages to model business processes. This is because although business process modeling and IT (information technology) interact in practice, suggesting that modeling in those areas should also be done in parallel, surprisingly few works have addressed the issue of the integrated modeling of business processes and IT. (2)

Process modeling is often done with visual tools (Visio, WBI Indexer, Rational Rose, etc.) and UML ** (Unified Modeling Language **). Processes can be represented using activity diagrams or swimlane diagrams (3) (among other notations). In addition to the symbols used in these diagrams, various other symbols have been used by different vendors to depict processing elements. Efforts have also been made in the direction of simulation of the process models. (4,5) There are various standards in this area, such as BPML (Business Process Modeling Language) and ebXML (Electronic Business Extensible Markup Language). BPML (6) is a meta language for tire modeling of business processes, just as XML is a meta-language for the modeling of business data. BPML provides an abstracted execution model for collaborative and transactional business processes based on the concept of a transactional finite-state machine. "BPML represents business processes as the interleaving of control flow, data flow, and event flow, while adding orthogonal design capabilities for business rules, security roles, and transaction contexts." (2) ebXML (7) is a suite of specifications designed to standardize the way businesses exchange messages, establish and manage trading relationships, and define business processes.

In contrast with these approaches, the technique presented here combines traditional business-process modeling with service-oriented architecture (SOA), domain-specific languages, and the use of metamodels to create executable business process specifications. These specifications can initially be modeled using existing graphics-based tools, but can later be translated into an underlying business domain grammar that can be used not only at them business level but at the IT level as well. This helps bridge the gap between business and IT by having a consistent representation of the process that can be carried through into development efforts.

This technique augments the notion of use cases with a "use case grammar" that describes the flow and sequence of interactions within a use case by using an executable language. In this way, use cases are augmented with domain-specific languages that allow a semi-formal specification of the domain to be executed.

The GOOD (Grammar-oriented Object Design) technique helps create business-driven dynamically reconfigurable architectures, a significant departure from current conventional thinking. Firstly, a process is viewed as a domain-specific language in a business domain rather than merely a set of partially ordered activities that are drawn by using a graphical design tool. Secondly, emphasis is given to how process models are developed, used, and enhanced over the duration of the software development life cycle by using GOOD. In particular, the issue of composing both new and existing model fragments, consolidating modules of business processes that are found to be common (common productions) across business lines or between companies or organizations, the achievement of consolidation through the use of a metamodel, and process verification through simulation via execution of the metamodel are all central to our analysis and development approach. This paper outlines these features and gives the motivations behind them.

The development of GOOD started in 1984 as an attempt to formalize valid interactions between objects in an object model and to formalize collaborations. This led to the augmentation of use cases with use-case grammars, which was later developed into an augmentation of OOAD (object oriented architecture and design) methods to support the alignment of business and IT through creating a dynamically reconfigurable architectural style. (8) Key to this paradigm are the notions depicted in Figure 1, including bridging the gap between business and IT through a common specification by representing business processes in a domain-specific language, or metamodel. This specification enables dynamic reconfiguration through the externalization of manners (i.e., rules for how a model behaves) of context-aware components (CACs). CACs are components that understand the environment or context in which they are inserted. They are context aware rather than context-sensitive; they gain insight into their environment rather than being tied to or dependent upon it.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

To illustrate the GOOD technique, we present a case study involving business processes for patent offices. The top three intellectual property offices, as measured by the number of patents granted, are the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), and the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office). A very high percentage of patent applications are submitted to two or all three of these offices, resulting in a great deal of duplicate processing of the same invention. With the escalating growth of filings in all three patent offices and the increasing difficulty in keeping up with the demand for timely processing, workload reduction may be achieved by processing a given application in one office and sharing the results with the other offices. (There are many legal issues that must be resolved before work...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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