Pattern-Based Evaluation of Scientific Workflow Management Systems

In recent years several scientific Workflow Management Systems (WfMSs) have been developed with the aim to automate large scale scientific experiments. As yet, many offerings have been developed, but none of them has been promoted as an accepted standard. In this paper we propose a pattern-based evaluation of three among the most widely used scientific WfMSs: Kepler, Taverna and Triana. The aim is to compare them with traditional business WfMSs, emphasizing the strengths and deficiencies of both systems. Moreover, a set of new patterns is defined from the analysis of the three considered systems.

QoS-oriented resource allocation and scheduling of multiple composite Web services in a hybrid cloud using a random-key genetic algorithm

In cloud computing resource allocation and scheduling of multiple composite web services is an important challenge. This is especially so in a hybrid cloud where there may be some free resources available from private clouds but some fee-paying resources from public clouds. Meeting this challenge involves two classical computational problems. One is assigning resources to each of the tasks in the composite web service. The other is scheduling the allocated resources when each resource may be used by more than one task and may be needed at different points of time. In addition, we must consider Quality-of-Service issues, such as execution time and running costs. Existing approaches to resource allocation and scheduling in public clouds and grid computing are not applicable to this new problem. This paper presents a random-key genetic algorithm that solves new resource allocation and scheduling problem. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of the algorithm.

Getting research data ‘out there’ : collaborative solutions to identifying, describing and making research data more visible

At QUT research data refers to information that is generated or collected to be used as primary sources in the production of original research results, and which would be required to validate or replicate research findings (Callan, De Vine, & Baker, 2010). Making publicly funded research data discoverable by the broader research community and the public is a key aim of the Australian National Data Service (ANDS). Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has been innovating in this space by undertaking mutually dependant technical and content (metadata) focused projects funded by ANDS. Research Data Librarians identified and described datasets generated from Category 1 funded research at QUT, by interviewing researchers, collecting metadata and fashioning metadata records for upload to the Australian Research Data commons (ARDC) and exposure through the Research Data Australia interface. In parallel to this project, a Research Data Management Service and Metadata hub project were being undertaken by QUT High Performance Computing & Research Support specialists. These projects will collectively store and aggregate QUT’s metadata and research data from multiple repositories and administration systems and contribute metadata directly by OAI-PMH compliant feed to RDA. The pioneering nature of the work has resulted in a collaborative project dynamic where good data management practices and the discoverability and sharing of research data were the shared drivers for all activity. Each project’s development and progress was dependent on feedback from the other. The metadata structure evolved in tandem with the development of the repository and the development of the repository interface responded to meet the needs of the data interview process. The project environment was one of bottom-up collaborative approaches to process and system development which matched top-down strategic alliances crossing organisational boundaries in order to provide the deliverables required by ANDS. This paper showcases the work undertaken at QUT, focusing on the Seeding the Commons project as a case study, and illustrates how the data management projects are interconnected. It describes the processes and systems being established to make QUT research data more visible and the nature of the collaborations between organisational areas required to achieve this. The paper concludes with the Seeding the Commons project outcomes and the contribution this project made to getting more research data ‘out there’.

A social matching system for an online dating network : a preliminary study

Due to the change in attitudes and lifestyles, people expect to find new partners and friends via various ways now-a-days. Online dating networks create a network for people to meet each other and allow making contact with different objectives of developing a personal, romantic or sexual relationship. Due to the higher expectation of users, online matching companies are trying to adopt recommender systems. However, the existing recommendation techniques such as content-based, collaborative filtering or hybrid techniques focus on users explicit contact behaviors but ignore the implicit relationship among users in the network. This paper proposes a social matching system that uses past relations and user similarities in finding potential matches. The proposed system is evaluated on the dataset collected from an online dating network. Empirical analysis shows that the recommendation success rate has increased to 31% as compared to the baseline success rate of 19%.

Open source software for workflow management : the case of YAWL

"This column is distinguished from previous Impact columns in that it concerns the development tightrope between research and commercial take-up and the role of the LGPL in an open source workflow toolkit produced in a University environment. Many ubiquitous systems have followed this route, (Apache, BSD Unix, ...), and the lessons this Service Oriented Architecture produces cast yet more light on how software diffuses out to impact us all." Michiel van Genuchten and Les Hatton Workflow management systems support the design, execution and analysis of business processes. A workflow management system needs to guarantee that work is conducted at the right time, by the right person or software application, through the execution of a workflow process model. Traditionally, there has been a lack of broad support for a workflow modeling standard. Standardization efforts proposed by the Workflow Management Coalition in the late nineties suffered from limited support for routing constructs. In fact, as later demonstrated by the Workflow Patterns Initiative (www.workflowpatterns.com), a much wider range of constructs is required when modeling realistic workflows in practice. YAWL (Yet Another Workflow Language) is a workflow language that was developed to show that comprehensive support for the workflow patterns is achievable. Soon after its inception in 2002, a prototype system was built to demonstrate that it was possible to have a system support such a complex language. From that initial prototype, YAWL has grown into a fully-fledged, open source workflow management system and support environment

What is ERP?

Though enterprise resource planning (ERP) has gained some prominence in the information systems (IS) literature over the past few years and is a significant phenomenon in practice, through (a) a historical analysis, (b) meta-analysis of representative IS literature, and (c) a survey of academic experts, we reveal dissenting views on the phenomenon. Given this diversity of perspectives, it is unlikely that at this stage a broadly agreed definition of ERP can be achieved. We thus seek to increase awareness of the issues and stimulate further discussion, with the ultimate aim being to: (a) aid communication amongst researchers and between researchers and practitioners; (2) inform development of teaching materials on ERP and related concepts in university curricula and in commercial education and training; and (3) aid communication amongst clients, consultants and vendors. Increase transparence of the ERP concept within IS may also benefit other aligned fields of knowledge.

If Big Brother comes to a venue near you! Employee surveillance issues and the communication professional

Todoy's monogers-drowing on the expertise of their IT professiono/s-other hand, Australian workers reportedly spend 3.6 hours per week using the Intemet for personal reasons. Top Fortune 500 US companies have reported losing billions of dollars because of 'cyber-Ioofing'. Yet workploce surveiffonce-token to extremesmay impact negatively on perceived levels of trust within the organisation, cantribute to employees' increased stress and decreased job dissatisfaction, and affect productivity. Highlighted are current trends in workplace privacy, key communication and control issues, the current legal climate, and ethical issues that communication professionals need to address to forestall future problems. lA questionnaire is included as a starting point for communication professionals to assess their own attitudes and values to workplace surveillance.

Strategy content analysis for service identification : a case study on government agencies

In a resource constrained business world, strategic choices must be made on process improvement and service delivery. There are calls for more agile forms of enterprises and much effort is being directed at moving organizations from a complex landscape of disparate application systems to that of an integrated and flexible enterprise accessing complex systems landscapes through service oriented architecture (SOA). This paper describes the analysis of strategies to detect supporting business services. These services can then be delivered in a variety of ways: web-services, new application services or outsourced services. The focus of this paper is on strategy analysis to identify those strategies that are common to lines of business and thus can be supported through shared services. A case study of a state government is used to show the analytical method and the detection of shared strategies.

A review of rationale for allocating costs and payments in producing and supplying public sector information PART A of 2 Parts – Chapters 1, 2 and 3) 13 March 2011 version

This work reviews the rationale and processes for raising revenue and allocating funds to perform information intensive activities that are pertinent to the work of democratic government. ‘Government of the people, by the people, for the people’ expresses an idea that democratic government has no higher authority than the people who agree to be bound by its rules. Democracy depends on continually learning how to develop understandings and agreements that can sustain voting majorities on which democratic law making and collective action depends. The objective expressed in constitutional terms is to deliver ‘peace, order and good government’. Meeting this objective requires a collective intellectual authority that can understand what is possible; and a collective moral authority to understand what ought to happen in practice. Facts of life determine that a society needs to retain its collective competence despite a continual turnover of its membership as people die but life goes on. Retaining this ‘collective competence’ in matters of self-government depends on each new generation: • acquiring a collective knowledge of how to produce goods and services needed to sustain a society and its capacity for self-government; • Learning how to defend society diplomatically and militarily in relation to external forces to prevent overthrow of its self-governing capacity; and • Learning how to defend society against divisive internal forces to preserve the authority of representative legislatures, allow peaceful dispute resolution and maintain social cohesion.

Soundness of workflow nets with reset arcs

Petri nets are often used to model and analyze workflows. Many workflow languages have been mapped onto Petri nets in order to provide formal semantics or to verify correctness properties. Typically, the so-called Workflow nets are used to model and analyze workflows and variants of the classical soundness property are used as a correctness notion. Since many workflow languages have cancelation features, a mapping to workflow nets is not always possible. Therefore, it is interesting to consider workflow nets with reset arcs. Unfortunately, soundness is undecidable for workflow nets with reset arcs. In this paper, we provide a proof and insights into the theoretical limits of workflow verification.

Designing a workflow system using coloured petri nets

Traditional workflow systems focus on providing support for the control-flow perspective of a business process, with other aspects such as data management and work distribution receiving markedly less attention. A guide to desirable workflow characteristics is provided by the well-known workflow patterns which are derived from a comprehensive survey of contemporary tools and modelling formalisms. In this paper we describe the approach taken to designing the newYAWL workflow system, an offering that aims to provide comprehensive support for the control-flow, data and resource perspectives based on the workflow patterns. The semantics of the newYAWL workflow language are based on Coloured Petri Nets thus facilitating the direct enactment and analysis of processes described in terms of newYAWL language constructs. As part of this discussion, we explain how the operational semantics for each of the language elements are embodied in the newYAWL system and indicate the facilities required to support them in an operational environment. We also review the experiences associated with developing a complete operational design for an offering of this scale using formal techniques.

Clone detection in repositories of business process models

As organizations reach to higher levels of business process management maturity, they often find themselves maintaining repositories of hundreds or even thousands of process models, representing valuable knowledge about their operations. Over time, process model repositories tend to accumulate duplicate fragments (also called clones) as new process models are created or extended by copying and merging fragments from other models. This calls for methods to detect clones in process models, so that these clones can be refactored as separate subprocesses in order to improve maintainability. This paper presents an indexing structure to support the fast detection of clones in large process model repositories. The proposed index is based on a novel combination of a method for process model decomposition (specifically the Refined Process Structure Tree), with established graph canonization and string matching techniques. Experiments show that the algorithm scales to repositories with hundreds of models. The experimental results also show that a significant number of non-trivial clones can be found in process model repositories taken from industrial practice.

Managing process model complexity via concrete syntax modifications

While Business Process Management (BPM) is an established discipline, the increased adoption of BPM technology in recent years has introduced new challenges. One challenge concerns dealing with the ever-growing complexity of business process models. Mechanisms for dealing with this complexity can be classified into two categories: 1) those that are solely concerned with the visual representation of the model and 2) those that change its inner structure. While significant attention is paid to the latter category in the BPM literature, this paper focuses on the former category. It presents a collection of patterns that generalize and conceptualize various existing mechanisms to change the visual representation of a process model. Next, it provides a detailed analysis of the degree of support for these patterns in a number of state-of-the-art languages and tools. This paper concludes with the results of a usability evaluation of the patterns conducted with BPM practitioners.

Developing research data management services at QUT

QUT Library and the High Performance Computing and Research Support (HPC) Team have been collaborating on developing and delivering a range of research support services, including those designed to assist researchers to manage their data. QUT’s Management of Research Data policy has been available since 2010 and is complemented by the Data Management Guidelines and Checklist. QUT has partnered with the Australian Research Data Service (ANDS) on a number of projects including Seeding the Commons, Metadata Hub (with Griffith University) and the Data Capture program. The HPC Team has also been developing the QUT Research Data Repository based on the Architecta Mediaflux system and have run several pilots with faculties. Library and HPC staff have been trained in the principles of research data management and are providing a range of research data management seminars and workshops for researchers and HDR students.

newYAWL : Towards Workflow 2.0

The field of workflow technology has burgeoned in recent years providing a variety of means of automating business processes. It is a great source of opportunity for organisations seeking to streamline and optimise their operations. Despite these advantages however, the current generation of workflow technologies are subject to a variety of criticisms, in terms of their restricted view of what comprises a business process, their imprecise definition and their general inflexibility. As a remedy to these potential difficulties, in this paper we propose a series of development goals for the next generation of workflow technology. We also present newYAWL, a formally defined, multi-perspective reference language for workflow systems.