Process simulation support in BPM tools: The case of BPMN

Due to the increasing acceptance of BPM, nowadays BPM tools are extensively used in organizations. Core to BPM are the process modeling languages, of which BPMN is the one that has been receiving most attention these days. Once a business process is described using BPMN, one can use a process simulation approach in order to find its optimized form. In this context, the simulation of business processes, such as those defined in BPMN, appears as an obvious way of improving processes. This paper analyzes the business process modeling and simulation areas, identifying the elements that must be present in the BPMN language in order to allow processes described in BPMN to be simulated. During this analysis a set of existing BPM tools, which support BPMN, are compared regarding their limitations in terms of simulation support.

Conceptual-physical bridging – From BPMN models to physical implementations on kettle

Developing and implementing data-oriented workflows for data migration processes are complex tasks involving several problems related to the integration of data coming from different schemas. Usually, they involve very specific requirements - every process is almost unique. Having a way to abstract their representation will help us to better understand and validate them with business users, which is a crucial step for requirements validation. In this demo we present an approach that provides a way to enrich incrementally conceptual models in order to support an automatic way for producing their correspondent physical implementation. In this demo we will show how B2K (Business to Kettle) system works transforming BPMN 2.0 conceptual models into Kettle data-integration executable processes, approaching the most relevant aspects related to model design and enrichment, model to system transformation, and system execution.

Automatic generation of ETL physical systems from BPMN conceptual models

ETL conceptual modeling is a very important activity in any data warehousing system project implementation. Owning a high-level system representation allowing for a clear identification of the main parts of a data warehousing system is clearly a great advantage, especially in early stages of design and development. However, the effort to model conceptually an ETL system rarely is properly rewarded. Translating ETL conceptual models directly into something that saves work and time on the concrete implementation of the system process it would be, in fact, a great help. In this paper we present and discuss a hybrid approach to this problem, combining the simplicity of interpretation and power of expression of BPMN on ETL systems conceptualization with the use of ETL patterns to produce automatically an ETL skeleton, a first prototype system, which has the ability to be executed in a commercial ETL tool like Kettle.

Estudo e implementação de modelos de gestão de stocks em sistemas ERP para empresas retalhistas

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia de Sistemas

Abnormal interactions between context, memory structure, and mood in schizophrenia: an ERP investigation

This study used event-related potentials to examine interactions between mood, sentence context, and semantic memory structure in schizophrenia. Seventeen male chronic schizophrenia and 15 healthy control subjects read sentence pairs after positive, negative, or neutral mood induction. Sentences ended with expected words (EW), within-category violations (WCV), or between-category violations (BCV). Across all moods, patients showed sensitivity to context indexed by reduced N400 to EW relative to both WCV and BCV. However, they did not show sensitivity to the semantic memory structure. N400 abnormalities were particularly enhanced under a negative mood in schizophrenia. These findings suggest abnormal interactions between mood, context processing, and connections within semantic memory in schizophrenia, and a specific role of negative mood in modulating semantic processes in this disease.

The music of language: an ERP investigation of the effects of musical training on emotional prosody processing

Recent studies have demonstrated the positive effects of musical training on the perception of vocally expressed emotion. This study investigated the effects of musical training on event-related potential (ERP) correlates of emotional prosody processing. Fourteen musicians and fourteen control subjects listened to 228 sentences with neutral semantic content, differing in prosody (one third with neutral, one third with happy and one third with angry intonation), with intelligible semantic content (semantic content condition--SCC) and unintelligible semantic content (pure prosody condition--PPC). Reduced P50 amplitude was found in musicians. A difference between SCC and PPC conditions was found in P50 and N100 amplitude in non-musicians only, and in P200 amplitude in musicians only. Furthermore, musicians were more accurate in recognizing angry prosody in PPC sentences. These findings suggest that auditory expertise characterizing extensive musical training may impact different stages of vocal emotional processing.

Avaliação da implementação do SAP ERP na logística: estudo de caso

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia de Sistemas

Task clustering on ETL systems – A pattern-oriented approach

Usually, data warehousing populating processes are data-oriented workflows composed by dozens of granular tasks that are responsible for the integration of data coming from different data sources. Specific subset of these tasks can be grouped on a collection together with their relationships in order to form higher- level constructs. Increasing task granularity allows for the generalization of processes, simplifying their views and providing methods to carry out expertise to new applications. Well-proven practices can be used to describe general solutions that use basic skeletons configured and instantiated according to a set of specific integration requirements. Patterns can be applied to ETL processes aiming to simplify not only a possible conceptual representation but also to reduce the gap that often exists between two design perspectives. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of an ETL pattern-based approach using task clustering, analyzing a real world ETL scenario through the definitions of two commonly used clusters of tasks: a data lookup cluster and a data conciliation and integration cluster.

A domain-specific language for ETL patterns specification in Data Warehousing Systems

During the last few years many research efforts have been done to improve the design of ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) systems. ETL systems are considered very time-consuming, error-prone and complex involving several participants from different knowledge domains. ETL processes are one of the most important components of a data warehousing system that are strongly influenced by the complexity of business requirements, their changing and evolution. These aspects influence not only the structure of a data warehouse but also the structures of the data sources involved with. To minimize the negative impact of such variables, we propose the use of ETL patterns to build specific ETL packages. In this paper, we formalize this approach using BPMN (Business Process Modelling Language) for modelling more conceptual ETL workflows, mapping them to real execution primitives through the use of a domain-specific language that allows for the generation of specific instances that can be executed in an ETL commercial tool.

Using a domain-specific language to enrich ETL schemas

Today it is easy to find a lot of tools to define data migration schemas among different types of information systems. Data migration processes use to be implemented on a very diverse range of applications, ranging from conventional operational systems to data warehousing platforms. The implementation of a data migration process often involves a serious planning, considering the development of conceptual migration schemas at early stages. Such schemas help architects and engineers to plan and discuss the most adequate way to migrate data between two different systems. In this paper we present and discuss a way for enriching data migration conceptual schemas in BPMN using a domain-specific language, demonstrating how to convert such enriched schemas to a first correspondent physical representation (a skeleton) in a conventional ETL implementation tool like Kettle.

A relational algebra approach to ETL modeling

The MAP-i Doctoral Programme in Informatics, of the Universities of Minho, Aveiro and Porto

Modelo de avaliação do impacto das TSI na produtividade das organizações

Dissertação de mestrado em Sistemas de Informação

Modelação de processos num serviço de uma organização de ensino superior

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial