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www.kit.edu
Institut AIFB, Universität Karlsruhe (TH)
Forschungsuniversität • gegründet 1825
Towards Automatic Composition of Processes based on Semantic Descriptions of Business Objects and Services
Prof. Dr. Rudi Studer
Grundlagen der Informatik I - ©AIFB 2008
KIT – die Kooperation von Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe GmbH und Universität Karlsruhe (TH)
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Agenda
Introduction
Motivation and Aim
Previous Work
Goals of the Project
Determining of Semantic Service Information
Architecture
Timeframe and Milestones
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Introduction- Business Objects
SAP Business Objects are entities that encapsulate business data and business logic
BOs are described by a business object model, which defines:The Structure of the business object’s attributes
The Type of the business object’s attributes
Aspects of the business object instance’s behavior during its life cycle
Service interfaces for accessing the business object’s instances
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Introduction – Core Services
A BO is accessed only through its service interfaces
Core services provide a generic interface to business logic of business object nodes
Each BO node provides same set of core services for performing basic operations like READ, MODIFY and SAVE
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Introduction – Compound Services
Compound services: coarse-grained rather than fine-grained like core services
for A2A and B2B communication
Interplay of compound and core services
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Motivation and Aim
Currently, compound services and A2A or B2B integration scenarios are designed (composed) manually
Time consuming and error-prone task
Not suited for small and middle sized enterprises
Aim: to develop methods that facilitate composition of compound services as well as A2A or B2B integration scenarios
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Technical Challenges
In order to achieve automatic compositionBusiness objects and services need to be described semantically
Desired properties of the composed system need to be specified
Automatic composition algorithm need to be developed
2. properties of the desired composition
1. Semantic descriptions of BOs and Services
4. Service compositions that have the desired properties
3. Composition Algorithm
ProviderUser
ServiceDescriptionsRepository
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Previous WorkJens Lemcke – POEM
Composition algorithms for solving the task of designing a collaborative business process, while respecting a set of primary and recovery goals by describing the business processes as a finite state machine
FZI – Ontology developmentDeveloping an ontology based on the SAP business objects catalog
Sudhir Agarwal – PhD ThesisSemantic Description of Web Services
Specification of desired properties of the target process
Policies1. …2. …3. …
Goals1. …2. …3. …
CurrentSituation
Exception
Specifications
Company’s data base
Plan for executionGoal
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Goals of the Project
1. To investigate which information about services and business objects is available and how it can be used to extract their semantic descriptions (semi) automatically.
2. To investigate how the composition of compound services and A2A or B2B integration scenarios can be performed automatically, at least to some extent, in order to save time and achieve less error-prone processes.
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Determining of Semantic Service Information
Tasks:
Identify sources of semantic service information
Develop methods for the extraction of semantic information
Specify the results of the extraction processes with appropriate formalisms
Semantic WS DescriptionsExtraction of Service
Descriptions
Semantic WS Descriptions
Semantic WS DescriptionsSemantic Service Descriptions
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Sources of Semantic Service Information
SAP Business objects provide a good starting point for the extraction of semantic description
The structure of the BO’s attributes can be used for the specification of additional requirements on the composition of services
The type of the BO’s attributes can be used as a source for extracting semantic information
Aspects of the BO’s instance behavior provide additional information about constrains of the service’s output
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Extraction of Semantic Information
Development of methods for extraction of semantic information from semi-structured data
Ontology learning combined with information extraction approaches
The extracted semantic information is specified with a formalism, which facilitates the composition of services
DescriptionFormalismDescriptionFormalism
BOs information and service descriptions
Extraction of Semantic Information
Semantic WS DescriptionsSemantic WS DescriptionsSemantic WS Descriptions
DescriptionFormalism
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Composition of Compound Services and A2A or B2B Integration Scenarios
The desired properties of the process to be composed also have to be formally specified:
Collect the requirements for the property types of the desired processes
Specify the constraints on the compound service and A2A or B2B
Develop a composition algorithm, which generates an executable process. Based on:
The semantic descriptions of services and business objectsThe desired properties of the resulting process
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Architecture
The Semantic Enterprise Service Repository stores the descriptions of the business objects and services
Process composer:Input: process request with process requirements
Output: executable process
Process composerProcess composer Executable ProcessExecutable ProcessProcess Request & Process RequirementsProcess Request & Process Requirements
Semantic Enterprise Service RepositorySemantic Enterprise Service Repository
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Timeframe and Milestones
One year feasibility study on automatic composition of processes based on semantic descriptions of business objects and services, followed by two years for development of methods and tools
Milestones for the feasibility study:An analysis of the sources and types of information about services and business objects
A methodology for the extraction of semantic descriptions of services based on the business objects information and constrains, in order to facilitate the composition of compound services