s-cube lp: business transaction modeling, analysis, and customization across service networks

www.s-cube-network.eu

S-Cube Learning Package

Business Transaction Modeling, Analysis, and Customization Across Service Networks

Lero- the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre

Rafiqul Haque & Noel Carroll

Learning Package Categorization

S-Cube

Business Transaction Language

Analysis of Service Network

Modeling and Analysis Business

Transaction in Service Network

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Background

Business transaction – Requirements

Research Problem

Research Contribution

Discussion

Conclusion & Future Works

Further Reading

Learning Package Outline

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Develop an understanding the operations of service networks:

– Adapt to ever-changing business environment

– Agile Service Networks

Dispersed complex service eco-systems

– Monitoring performance becomes a difficult task.

View a service network as a specific set of linkages

– Set of actors: properties can characterise the linkages which influence service behaviour.

– Modelling service operations and analytics to enhance service requirements

– Need to Introduce:

- Business Transaction Language (BTL)

- Service Network Performance Analytics (SNPA)

- Social Network Analysis (SNA)

Background: Service World

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Background: Service Environment

Complex business interactions

The World is Flat!

Service Science: need to investigate the contributory

value of business processes and its IT-enabled influence

on service performance.

– Exchange of resources

– Application of competences

– Value co-creation through interactions

Technological advances continue to act as a driving force

for ‘making new patterns and a new elevated level of

value creation possible’ (Normann, 2001; p. 8)

– Need to understand how process patterns influence service

performance.

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Background: Service Science - Interaction View

Unite two disciplines:

– Service computing

– Service management

Performance is often influence by external entities causing structural variability across a service eco-system

– Enhance service management decision-making tasks (service management),

– Feed performance information into service requirements engineering (service computing).

Significant gap in our ability to bridge and advance our understanding of technology and management in this so called ‘service-dominant’ business environment.

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Background: Defining Service Science

“Study the application of the resources of one or more systems for the benefit of another system in economic exchange” (Spohrer et al., 2007; p. 2).

Define how and why services generate value.

Four key observations about these disciplines:

– Heavily resource dependent

– Tend to integrate or coordinate resources

– Measuring performance is very important.

– Disciplines incorporate the word “service”, e.g. service engineering.

Develop methods to extend the availability and accessibility of business processes.

Improving manager’s ability to:

– Predict risk

– Estimate their effects

– Reduce uncertainty through modelling value-exchange

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“We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” – Einstein

Background: Evolution of Business Transaction

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The Tablet of Commandments

“ You shall commit when all other has committed otherwise you shall sacrifice thyself ” - Atomicity

“ You shall not commit wrongdoing, you shall maintain integrity” – Consistency

“You shall wait for other to be completed first” – Isolation

“You shall not keep things unsafe”- Durability

The notion of transaction begun with four commandments..

Background: ACID – The Four Commandments

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A transaction is T ={T1, T2, T3, and T4 } can be completed successfully only when all of its sub-transaction is committed successfully .

Background: example of classical ACID transaction

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ACID Burns Long Running Business Transaction

Is ACID suitable for Business Transaction ?

Background: ACID – is suitable in business transaction?

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Background: example of ACID in business transaction

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A business transaction is a series of collaborative

activities distributed across multiple partners and

performed as a single unit of work (in a flexible manner)

by accomplishing the commitments agreed upon by the

partners.

“Commitments” is the specification of functional and

non-functional obligations that guide to achieve the

(common) business goals. Formally, it is called

Agreement or Contract.

Background : Definition of Business Transaction

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Background: Example of collaborative Business Transaction

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In a networked business environment, business

transactions -

– are performed collaboratively involving multiple participants.

– incorporate real-world business elements such as business and compliance policies, Quality of Services (QoS), critical business activities, and Service Level Agreement (SLA).

– commits independently because they are autonomous.

– are long-running takes days, months or sometime years to complete one transaction cycle.

– prone to failure because they traverse numbers of distributed business resources (applications) hosted at different locations; additionally, service based business is highly dynamic where demands scale up and down erratically.

Note: We have extracted these characteristics through extensive analysis on business

cases(some fictitious, some real) taken from [Schimchi-Levi et al.]

Background: Characteristics of Business Transaction

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Background: Correlation between business elements and transaction

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Background


Research Problem


Discussion


Further Reading


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Business Transaction– Requirements

Transaction model that aligns the real-world business

elements so that they can be defined/designed and realised

during processing transactions.

Technique/method/means to support the transactions

involving distributed and autonomous applications.

Technique/method/means to support the transactions in

various situations including dynamic, variable, and

uncertain situations. In other words, handling these situations

successfully by avoiding total failure of transactions .

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Background


Research Problem


Discussion


Further Reading


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Research Problem – Scenario 1

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I want to define business transaction from global perspective

Can I use any of these technologies for define proposed business transaction model ?

Implementation

Independent

BPMN, ebBPSS, Lets Dance

Implementation Specific

Standard Protocol

BTP, WS-AT, WS-BA

BPEL4Chor, WSCDL

• Implementation independent languages cover minimal scope of business transactions.

• Implementation specific languages are too complex and do not facilitate specifying

transactional properties. Note that, they may allow specifying quality attributes in particular,

response time which is a business oriented transactional property.

• Protocols are merely for coordinating business transaction. Coordination is not the

specification of business transaction but a runtime activity that manages transactions across

multiple partners.

No, these technologies do not adequately to model business transaction. Why?

Problem Description – Scenario 2

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Do existing modeling languages facilitate modeling business transactions ?

Graphical Languages

BPMN

Partially yes but Completely No. Why?

I want to define/model business transaction using Graphical notations cause I am expert in technologies

UMM

Let’s Dance

• None of the graphical language facilitates specifying transactional properties but

allows specifying some basic properties including processing time and response

time. For instance, BPMN has timer event that can be used to specify processing

time of an activity in the process.

Problem Description – Scenario 3

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Background


Research Problem


Discussion


Further Reading


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A Flexible Business Transaction Model that can serve as a blue print to describe the structural and behavioural aspects of transactions in a services network.

Develop a Business Transaction Language (BTL) that:

– Incorporates real-world business entities

– supports granular business process interactions of transactional nature that can address the highly fragmented nature of modern service-based applications that comprise end-to-end composite services.

– supports managing and monitoring service-based applications from a business transaction perspective

A reference model for customising business transactions to adapt dynamic requirements that evolve while a transaction process is running

Modelling the socio-technical dynamics of service environments

– Social Network Analysis

– Actor Network Theory

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Background


Research Problem


Discussion


Further Reading


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Solúbtha – A Flexible Business Transaction Model

Solúbtha describes the structural and behavioural aspects of

transactions in a services network.

Structural aspect deals with building the structure of

transactions so that the transactions can perform operations

in a meaningful and coherent manner.

Behavioural aspect of a business transaction model deals

with

– the operations that performed by transactions

– transactional properties that stem from the two very

different domains entailing business and system and

– the logical interactions between and among transactions

– the transition of transaction states

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Solúbtha – Conceptual Model

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Solúbtha – Overview of Structure

DEFINITION: From structural point of view, Solúbtha transaction

model is a transaction process graph such that TPG = (T,L) where T

and L are nonempty sets of finite number of Transactions (vertices)

T= {T1...Tn} and Links (edges) L= {L1....Ln}. The figure below is an

example of Solúbtha transaction structure.

T1

L1

T4

T3

T2

T5

L3

L6

L4

L2

L5

Customer

Seller

3rd party Logistics

Provider

Insurance

Bank

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Connections:

– Transactions in a G are connected each other through the

links.

– The underlying structure of a TPG is similar to wrapped

butterfly [Gross & Yellen, 1999] network architecture where

each transaction is connected with one to multiple transactions

in the model.

T1

L1

T4

T3

T2

T5

L3

L8

L5

L4

L2

L7

L6

L9

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• The transaction set T in a TPG can be partitioned into many subsets S1, S2...Sn that contain elements such that TPG(T,L)= {S{tn,lm} where n≥1 and m≥1. Because of this multiple partitions, the transaction model is also called as multi-partite graph.

Transaction Set

Subset 2

T1

L1

T4

T3

T2

T5

L3

L9

L5

L4

L2

L6

L8

L7

L10

Subset 1

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Solúbtha – Structural Characteristics

• The intersection of subsets in a TPG contains the elements that belongs to each of the intersected subsets in a graph. This means, one transaction associates or connected with multiple transactions in a TPG. The figure below demonstrates an intersection between two sets S1 and S2 such that T1⋲ S1 ∩ S2 .

T1

L1

T4

T3

T2

T5

L3

L9

L5

L4

L2

L6

L8

L7

L10

Subset 1

Subset 2

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A TPG cannot be empty. This can formally be expressed as

TPG(T, L) ≠⌀

• For a complete graph, a transaction set in a CTG contains

transactions associated with links such that a Complete

TPG(T,L) = {Tn, Lm} where n≥2 and m ≥1.

• A TPG contain neither open transaction nor open link (an

open transaction is defined as a transaction without any link

associating it where as Open link refers either head or tail of

a link is not connected with any endpoint). This can formally

be expressed as

TPG(T,L) = (¬Topen ˅ ¬L open)


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• The links in a TPG are directed from one transaction (vertex) to another transaction in either backward or forward sense.

• The transactions are mutually reachable when the links are in bidirectional (both backward and forward) sense.

• For a complete TPG, each link associates with at least two transactions. This means neither head-point nor tail-point of a link can be null.

• Each link associates utmost two transactions in a TPG.

• TPG may contain self-loop link which joins a transaction by itself. Self-loop indicates that a transaction operations may need to be performed recursively under certain condition.


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A TPG may need to be extended and trimmed during the

lifetime of a collaboration. Note that the lifetime of a

collaboration is determined by the period of the agreement

between/among the partners that is, Collaboration Lifetime =

(Expiry Date – Starting Date)of the agreement .

Transactions in a TPG may also need to be replaced to

optimise the performance or to avoid the failures of

transactions in uncertain conditions.

Three operators including add, prune, and replace are used to

perform extension and pruning of TPG and replacement of

transactions in a TPG.

Solúbtha –Structural Operations

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TPG Extension

- Transaction Addition: A TPG can be extended by adding new

transactions such that,

extended TPG(T,L) = {TTPG, LTPG} ∪ {T’TPG}

- The newly added transactions should be connected using links with the

pre-existing transactions in a TPG to ensure that it is reachable to the

pre-existing transactions in the graph. Thus, adding transactions

requires adding links in the graph as well. This can formally expressed

TPG(T,L) = {TTPG, LTPG} ∪ {L’ TPG}

- In some cases, all the pre-existing transactions in a TPG may require

to be connected with the added transaction.

- Sometimes, one to many pre-existing transaction in a TPG may require

to be connected with the added transaction but not all.


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Pruning Transaction Process Graph

– Pruning a transaction graph denotes eliminating

transactions and links from the graph.

– A transaction may need to be pruned from a TPG for

different reasons such as transaction has failed to satisfy

expected service level.

– Pruning a transaction from a TPG means pruning the

whole process and/or an organisation from the

collaboration as well as the network.

– A transaction can be forced by other transactions to be

pruned permanently from a TPG. We call it force pruning.


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Pruning Transaction Process Graph

– Transactions in TPG should be pruned along with their associative

links because TPG does not allow any open link in the graph. The key

idea is similar to dead path elimination.

Pr(TTPG,LTPG) = [Pr(TTPG) ˄ Pr(LTPG)] ˄ ¬[Pr(TTPG)]

– A link can be pruned without pruning a transaction that it

associates. The can be formally expressed as

Pr (TTPG,LTPG) = Pr (LTPG)

– A link cannot be pruned without adding another link if it is

the only link associating a transaction in a TPG.


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Transaction Replacement in TPG : Transactions in TPG can be replaced

by other transactions. There are two types of replacement:

– Permanent Replacement: A transaction in a TPG can be replaced

permanently by another transaction. This requires pruning and adding

transactions and links in the graph simultaneously,

PR(TTPG, LTPG) = [Pr(TTPG,LTPG) ˄ ADD(TTPG,LTPG)] ˄

¬[Pr(TTPG,LTPG) ˅ ADD(TTPG,LTPG)]˄

˄ ¬[ADD(TTPG)˅(LTPG)] ¬[Pr(TTPG)˅(LTPG)]

– Transient Replacement: A transaction in a TPG can be replaced

temporarily for a specific instance or to deal with uncertain events,

PR(TTPG, LTPG) = ADD(TTPG,LTPG) ˄ ¬Pr(TTPG,LTPG) ˄ ¬

[ADD(TTPG)˅( ADD(LTPG)]


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- In transient replacement, a transaction is added without pruning the

existing transaction that implies the former one still exist in the

graph.

- The former transaction delegates its operations to the transient one;

this implies the former transaction becomes inactive while the

transient one is active.


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Business transaction behavior can be classified into

Flexible and Atomic behavior.

Atomic behavior relies on “all or nothing principle”. Flat

and Closed Nested transaction models adheres this

principle.

Flexible behavior relies on “all vital or nothing”.

To achieve flexibility we extend the semantics of classical

atomicity and isolation properties to the followings:

– Eventual Failure Atomicity

– Relaxed Isolation

Solúbtha –Overview of Behaviour

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Solúbtha – Eventual Failure Atomic Behaviour

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Business Transaction Language - Overview

Business Transaction Language (BTL) is a declarative

language to model transactions at design-time.

BTL describes what to implement not how to implemented

It facilitates specifying transactional properties derive from

business elements.

It comprises of constructs of three perspectives including

business, functional and technical.

It is platform agnostic language, which means the model

defined in BTL can be implemented regardless the type of

platform that integrate specific technologies.

BTL facilitates interoperable transaction fragments because it

is lingua-franca XML based language.

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BTL – Keywords, Operators, and Primitives

Business Transaction Language

Keywords Logical Operators

precede, succeed, SplitOrder, jointOrder,

AnyOrder, Boolean, check, require, composite,

atomic, trigger, jumpTo, transient, permanent,

local, global, hard, soft, contingent, vital,

nonVital, compensating, location, route, means,

delegateTo, refundTo, returnTo, payTo,

deliverTo, shipTo

AND, OR, EOR

Primitives for coordinating BT at runtime

Commit , Cancel, Wait, Retry, Suspend, Postpone, Ignore,

Penalize, Delegate, Return, Terminate, Resize

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Modelling Business Transaction – Service Network (SN)

SLA 1: supplier-retailer

SLA 2: supplier-3PL

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Modelling Business Transaction – Handshaking(Service Level Agreement) in SN

Service Level Agreement/

Master Service Level

Agreement

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Modelling Business Transaction – BPMN Model of End-to-End Transaction

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T8 = Payment Confirmation

T6 = Delivery Processing T7 = Payment Processing

Business

policy

Security policy

Payment must

be

acknowledged

Business

policy

Quality of

Service Delivery

Lead Time is 2

days

Re

tail

er

Au

to I

nc

.

Quality of

Service

Payment must

be

acknowledged

within 24 hours

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Au

to I

nc

. D

HL

Ca

rgo

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Modelling Business Transaction – BTL Representation

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Service Network

Supports business

transaction, where a

business transaction is

implemented through a

service networks.

- For example: a service

network that delivers a

mortgage service

A service eco-system is a

collection of service

networks – equal to a group

of business networks

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Service Network Analysis

One of the key concerns centres on the need to visualise business transactions and model resource exchange.

Another Approach: Social Network Analysis (SNA)

Service Network Performance Analytics

- Service Dynamics Analysis: key focus in service science (Lero@UL)

Interaction supports performance - Networks produce patterns which present service blueprint

– Analyse what transactional patterns tell us about service structures

• Q: How does service structure impact on performance?

• Developing Service Network Performance Analytics - Service Network Metrics

- Evaluation Framework

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Value of Service Network

Reporting on the value of service network

relationships is critical

- Value may be referred to as “the adaptability

and survivability of the beneficiary system”

(Vargo et al. 2008; p.148).

- Determine service value through relational

exchanges

Loosely coupled value proposing social,

technological, and economic actors

interacting across service eco-systems:

1. Co-produce service offerings

2. Exchange service offerings, and

3. Co-create service value

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Social Network Analysis

Set of techniques which studies the

exchange of resources among actors.

Patterns of relations among nodes

- people, groups, organisations, or

information systems, etc.

Demonstrates the value of ties and

relationships

Mathematical representation of

interaction and exchanges which

influence behaviour.

- Deeper insight of how structural

regularities influence behaviour

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Social Network Analysis(Cont.)

Supporting partnership and alliances

Assessing service strategy execution

Improving strategic decision

– Accessing ASN

Integrating networks across core processes

- promote innovation

BTL can benefit from the application of SNA

- Support BTL to discover business process dynamic behaviour while identifying where strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and/or threats lie across a service network using SNA concepts.

- Provide valuable insight on the operating status of a service network and determine whether change may be required

- SNA allows us to graphically capture service interaction

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SNA Graphs

Graphs….

– mathematical structures used to model relations between

objects.

- nodes to represent objects (actors)

- edges to express relations (communication paths)

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SNA Graphs(Cont.)

Undirected

– to represent (only) symmetric relations

Directed

– to represent asymmetric (directed) and symmetric relations

Weighted

– to represent intensities, distances or costs of relations

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Service Network Metrics?

Need to compare Graphs with other

Graphs

Service networks: Need Graph

Metrics!

Properties of graphs to compare

Static graphs

– graph properties at a given point in time

(snapshot)

Dynamic graphs

– graph properties observed over a

period of time (i.e., service evolution)

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Identify issues which may present opportunities or threaten service sustainability.

– SWOT-like analysis (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) of the service environment

– Adopting the balanced scorecard critical success factors; financial results, customer satisfaction, learning and growth, internal processes, staff satisfaction, and community and environment.

Freeing up resources to develop value-added information is critical to managerial activities (e.g. rapid decision making and execution).

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Performance Indicators

Performance Measure

Explanation

Key Result Indicators (KRIs) Determine how service has

performed in the past, for example,

sales last month.

Performance indicators (PIs)

Inform what you ought to do.

Key Performance Indicators

(KPIs)

Prescribes what you ought to do to

increase performance.

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Business Transaction Customisation - Overview

Customisation denotes fine-tuning a generic business

transaction process to be reused to satisfy special

requirements.

The key purpose of customising business transaction is to

optimize the transaction performance by adding required

attributes that are extracted through analysis.

Customisation of business transaction model lessen

development cost and effort.

It enhance reusability business transaction.

Having the ability of customising business transaction at

runtime enables a system to adapt dynamic environment.

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Business Transaction Customisation – Reference Model

Business transaction customisation reference model comprises of two layers namely Transaction-view Segmentation Layer and Transaction Customization layer.

Transaction-view segmentation layer consists of task view, control view, quality view, and policy view.

A generic transaction process is segregated in views at transaction-view segmentation layer.

Tailoring of a transaction process is carried out at customisation layer in three phases that produces three solutions including meta-reference, reference , and final solution.

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Business Transaction Customisation –

Cloud Based Architecture

This work is in progress and therefore we do not provide much details about how to link

this architecture with transaction architecture.

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Business transaction for a large scale end-to-end processes

in collaborative business environment is highly complex.

The classical ACID principles for business transaction is

decidedly not suitable and thus, models that rely on ACID

cannot be employed for business transactions.

Business transactions need greater flexibility to sustain all

potential failures.

Business requirements also should be realised while

executing transaction, thus transaction models should involve

real-world business elements.

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Existing transaction models provide minimal flexibility and not able

to encapsulate any business data so that the runtime engine can

realise those data.

This research propose a transaction model named Solúbtha which

intertwined business elements with transaction model.

Solúbtha facilitates designing a transaction not only from

application perspective but also from business perspective which

leads better monitoring of business level performance indicators

along with process performance indicators at runtime.

To define the model, this research proposes an XML based

language named business transaction language.

Employ SNA to examine BTL developments.

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Further Reading

Noel Carroll, Rafiqul Haque, Ita Richardson, and Eoin Whelan: Modeling Business Transaction Across Service

Supply Chain Network. 20th International Conference on Information System Development(ISD), 2011.

Edinburgh, Scotland.

Francois Hantry, Mike P. Papazoglou, Willem-Jan van den Heuvel, Rafique Haque, Eoin Whelan, Noel Carroll,

Dimka Karastoyanova, Frank Leymann, Christos Nikolaou, Winfried Lamersdorf, Mohand-Said Hacid:

Business Process Management. Service Research Challenges and Solutions for the Future Internet:

Towards Mechanisms and Methods for Engineering, Managing, and Adapting Service-Based Systems.

Heidelberg, Germany: Springer, 2010. pp: 27-54

Yehia Taher, Rafiqul Haque, Michael Parkins, Ita Richardson, Eoin Whelan, and Willem-jan van den Heuvel. A

Multi-Layer Approach for Customizing Business Services. 12th International Conference on Electronic

Commerce and Web Technologies(ECWEB,2011) Toulouse, France. 20th May, 2011. Status: Accepted

but yet to be published.

Carroll, N., Whelan, E. and Richardson, I., (2010). Applying Social Network Analysis to Discover Service

Innovation within Agile Service Networks, Journal of Service Science, Volume 2, Issue 4, pp. 225-244

Carroll, N., Whelan, E., and Richardson, I., (2011). Exploring the Implications of IT-enabled Relational

Structures on Service Performance, Understanding Complex Services through Different Lenses

Conference, Cambridge Service Alliance Group, University of Cambridge, England

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http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1719370





Further Reading

Carroll, N, and Wang Y., (2011). Service Networks Performance Analytics: A Literature Review. Cloud

Computing and Service Science Conference (CLOSER 2011), Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands.

Carroll, N., Richardson, I., and Whelan, E., (2011). Service Science: Introducing The Need For Performance

Analytics for Service Networks Evolution, Cloud Computing and Service Science Conference (CLOSER

2011), Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands.

Carroll, N., Whelan, E. and Richardson, I., (2010). Understanding the Value of Business Process

Configuration. 3rd International Conference on Business Process and Service Computing (BPSC2010),

Leipzig, Germany, September 27-28.

Carroll, N., Whelan, E., and Richardson, I., (2010). The Discovery of Agile Service Networks through the Use

of Social Network Analysis, International Conference of Service Science (ICSS2010). May 13-14, 2010,

Hangzhou, China.

Carroll, N., Richardson, I., Whelan, E., (2010). Applying Social Network Analysis to Monitor Web-enabled

Business Processes. 6th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

(WEBIST), Valencia, Spain, April 7-10.

Carroll, N., Whelan, E. and Richardson, I., (2010). Application of Social Network Analysis to Service Networks

Performance Analytics: A Literature Review. Lero Technical Report (Lero-TR-2010-06), University of

Limerick, December 2010.

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Acknowledgements

The research leading to these results has

received funding from the European

Community’s Seventh Framework

Programme [FP7/2007-2013] under grant

agreement 215483 (S-Cube).

© Rafiq & Noel

s-cube lp: business transaction modeling, analysis, and customization across service networks

Technology