Artifact-Centric Business Process Models
Artifact-Centric Business Process Models: Brief Survey of Research Results and Challenges
Richard Hull
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA
Abstract. A data-centric approach to business process and workflow modeling has been emerging over the past several years. This short paper presents a structured framework for a class of data-centric business process models, which are based on “business artifacts”. The paper provides a brief survey of research results on artifact-centric business process, and identifies a broad array of remaining research challenges.
1 Introduction
Businesses and other organizations increasingly rely on business process management, and in particular the management of electronic workflows underlying business processes. While most workflow is still organized around relatively flat process-centric models, over the past several years a data-centric approach to workflow has emerged. A key paper in this area is [37], which introduces the artifact-centric approach to workflow modeling. This approach focuses on augmented data records, known as “business artifacts” or simply “artifacts”, that correspond to key business-relevant objects, their lifecycles, and how/when services (a.k.a. tasks) are invoked on them. This approach provides a simple and robust structure for workflow, and has been demonstrated in practice to permit efficiencies in business transformation. As this approach has been applied, both internal to IBM and with IBM customers [5,6] a family of new requirements has emerged which are not easily addressed by the largely procedural artifact-centric model introduced in [37]. To address these requirements, variations of the original artifactcentric model are now being explored. This short paper presents a framework that can be used to help structure this exploration and more clearly expose the implications of different modeling choices in artifact-centric business process. The paper also highlights a broad array of
Richard Hull
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA
Abstract. A data-centric approach to business process and workflow modeling has been emerging over the past several years. This short paper presents a structured framework for a class of data-centric business process models, which are based on “business artifacts”. The paper provides a brief survey of research results on artifact-centric business process, and identifies a broad array of remaining research challenges.
1 Introduction
Businesses and other organizations increasingly rely on business process management, and in particular the management of electronic workflows underlying business processes. While most workflow is still organized around relatively flat process-centric models, over the past several years a data-centric approach to workflow has emerged. A key paper in this area is [37], which introduces the artifact-centric approach to workflow modeling. This approach focuses on augmented data records, known as “business artifacts” or simply “artifacts”, that correspond to key business-relevant objects, their lifecycles, and how/when services (a.k.a. tasks) are invoked on them. This approach provides a simple and robust structure for workflow, and has been demonstrated in practice to permit efficiencies in business transformation. As this approach has been applied, both internal to IBM and with IBM customers [5,6] a family of new requirements has emerged which are not easily addressed by the largely procedural artifact-centric model introduced in [37]. To address these requirements, variations of the original artifactcentric model are now being explored. This short paper presents a framework that can be used to help structure this exploration and more clearly expose the implications of different modeling choices in artifact-centric business process. The paper also highlights a broad array of