Patent Application
20100114619
The present invention relates to transformation of free-form process diagrams into semantically rich business process models, and more specifically, to transformation of free-form process diagrams into semantically rich business process models using domain knowledge-based heuristic.
Business processes are a series of related business activities aimed at achieving one or more business objectives in a measurable manner. Typical business processes include receiving orders, marketing services, selling products, delivering services, distributing products, invoicing for services, and accounting for money received, for example. Models are developed to exposed and explore concepts within a business process. Today, business users utilize high level tools to express the concepts in a free-form graphical format such as Microsoft Powerpoint or Visio. These concepts need to be modeled, simulated, and enhanced. Typically, a business analyst takes business user's ideas realized by free-form process diagrams and manually creates the business artefacts using formal modeling software (or an IT developer interprets ideas in an implementation from direct interaction with the business user. Problems may occur in that the analyst may misinterpret the user's intended meaning of the elements within the free-form process diagrams.
Further, conventional automated methods automate the transforming of free-form diagrams into business models by having a predefined mapping of informal elements to business model elements. These conventional methods are often inflexible concerning handling of contextual information.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, a computer-implemented method for transforming a free-form process diagram into a semantically rich business model based on heuristics is provided. The method includes generating and storing predefined mappings between informal elements to be used in a free-form process diagram and formal elements associated with a semantically rich business model, in a storage medium, receiving a free-form process diagram to be transformed, automatically detecting and mapping the informal elements of the free-form process diagram to the stored predefined-mappings, automatically detecting and mapping connectors positioned between the informal elements of the free-form process diagram, and obtaining user input from a user for generating user-defined mappings for mapping unrecognizable informal elements of the free-form process diagram to formal elements and transforming the unrecognized informal elements into formal elements based on the user-defined mappings.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, a computer program product implementing the above-mentioned method is also provided.
Additional features and advantages are realized through the techniques of the present invention. Other embodiments and aspects of the invention are described in detail herein and are considered a part of the claimed invention. For a better understanding of the invention with the advantages and the features, refer to the description and to the drawings.
The subject matter which is regarded as the invention is particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed in the claims at the conclusion of the specification. The forgoing and other features, and advantages of the invention are apparent from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
With reference now to
Referring to
As shown in
According to another embodiment of the present invention, the business modeler not only recognizes shapes and symbols but also terms and punctuation symbols (described later with reference to
Referring back to
From operation 100, the process moves to operation 110, where connectors between the informal elements of the free-form process diagram are automatically detected and mapped. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the connectors are arrows, for example, which connect one element to another element within the free-form process diagram and the business model. Examples of the detection and mappings of the connectors can be seen at
In
The “getCloseProximityNode” is used to find the closest shapes that are within a given distance to a start or end of an arrow. The threshold where the arrow and the shape are considered in close proximity is determined based on the size of the shape and the relative position and form of the shape. The “getBestConnectionMatch” function is where domain specific heuristics are used to determine which of candidate (start, end) pairs are best matched to be considered as a connection represented by the arrow. According to an embodiment, each heuristic assigns a weight to each pair of (start, end) candidate nodes. These heuristics may include, for example, the distance between the shapes to the arrows, that is, the assigned weight is proportional to the distance (start, arrow.start) to distance (end, arrow.end, and the validity of the connection, for example, discarding the pairs which represent a connection from a terminate node to a task node, or from a task node to a start node. Further, the heuristics may include considering the relative position of the shapes to each other such as when a start shape maps to a decision and the candidate end nodes are located to the right, one above the other (as depicted in
When the free-form process diagram includes shapes, symbols or terms unrecognizable by the business modeler, the business modeler prompts the user for this information in operation 110 in
Embodiments of the present invention use a domain knowledge based heuristic to interpret with a user intended in their free-form process diagram by automatically detecting and mapping informal elements and connectors to formal elements, thereby reducing the need for a business analyst to manually intervene. Additional advantages of the present invention are that it allows the user to continue to model in free-form while still having the full advantage of detailed analysis when translated into a formal business model with the confidence that the original design is accurately and efficiently brought into a semantically rich business model.
The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the invention. As used herein, the singular forms “a”, “an” and “the” are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms “comprises” and/or “comprising,” when used in this specification, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one ore more other features, integers, steps, operations, element components, and/or groups thereof.
The corresponding structures, materials, acts, and equivalents of all means or step plus function elements in the claims below are intended to include any structure, material, or act for performing the function in combination with other claimed elements as specifically claimed. The description of the present invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description, but is not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the invention in the form disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention. The embodiment was chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the invention and the practical application, and to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the invention for various embodiments with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated
The flow diagrams depicted herein are just one example. There may be many variations to this diagram or the steps (or operations) described therein without departing from the spirit of the invention. For instance, the steps may be performed in a differing order or steps may be added, deleted or modified. All of these variations are considered a part of the claimed invention.
Generally, the method for transforming a free-form process diagram into a semantically rich business model described herein is practiced with a general-purpose computer and the method may be coded as a set of instructions on removable or hard media for use by the general-purpose computer.
ROM 820 contains the basic operating system for computer system 300. The operating system may alternatively reside in RAM 815 or elsewhere as is known in the art. Examples of removable data and/or program storage device 830 include magnetic media such as floppy drives and tape drives and optical media such as CD ROM drives. Examples of mass data and/or program storage device 835 include hard disk drives and non-volatile memory such as flash memory. In addition to keyboard 845 and mouse 850, other user input devices such as trackballs, writing tablets, pressure pads, microphones, light pens and position-sensing screen displays may be connected to user interface 840. Examples of display devices include cathode-ray tubes (CRT) and liquid crystal displays (LCD).
A computer program with an appropriate application interface may be created by one of skill in the art and stored on the system or a data and/or program storage device to simplify the practicing of this invention. In operation, information for or the computer program created to run the present invention is loaded on the appropriate removable data and/or program storage device 830, fed through data port 860 or typed in using keyboard 845.
In view of the above, the present method embodiment may therefore take the form of computer or controller implemented processes and apparatuses for practicing those processes. The disclosure can also be embodied in the form of computer program code containing instructions embodied in tangible media, such as floppy diskettes, CD-ROMs, hard drives, or any other computer-readable storage medium, wherein, when the computer program code is loaded into and executed by a computer or controller, the computer becomes an apparatus for practicing the invention. The disclosure may also be embodied in the form of computer program code or signal, for example, whether stored in a storage medium, loaded into and/or executed by a computer or controller, or transmitted over some transmission medium, such as over electrical wiring or cabling, through fiber optics, or via electromagnetic radiation, wherein, when the computer program code is loaded into and executed by a computer, the computer becomes an apparatus for practicing the invention. When implemented on a general-purpose microprocessor, the computer program code segments configure the microprocessor to create specific logic circuits. A technical effect of the executable instructions is to implement the exemplary method described above.
While the preferred embodiment to the invention had been described, it will be understood that those skilled in the art, both now and in the future, may make various improvements and enhancements which fall within the scope of the claims which follow. These claims should be construed to maintain the proper protection for the invention first described.
