MDE FOR BPM

A Systematic Review

Jose Manuel Perez

UCLM-Soluziona Research and Development Institute, Ronda de Toledo s/n, 13005, Ciudad Real, Spain

Francisco Ruiz, Mario Piattini

Alarcos Research Group, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Paseo de la Universidad, 4, 13071Ciudad Real, Spain

Keywords: Business process management, M

odel driven engineering, Model driven architecture, Systematic review.

Abstract: Due to the rapid change in the business processes of organizations, Business Process Management (BPM)

has come into being. BPM helps business analysts to manage all concerns related to business processes, but

the gap between these analysts and people who build the applications is still large. The organization’s value

chain changes very rapidly; to modify simultaneously the systems that support the business management

process is impossible. MDE (Model Driven Engineering) is a good support for transferring these business

process changes to the systems that implement these processes. Thus, by using any MDE approach, such as

MDA, the alignment between business people and software engineering should be improved. To discover

the different proposals that exist in this area, a systematic review was performed. As a result, the OMG’s

Business Process Definition Metamodel (BPDM) has been identified as the standard that will be the key for

the application of MDA for BPM.

1 INTRODUCTION

There is a need for today’s business to create and

modify value chains rapidly. This brings about

continuous growth and change in business processes.

The goal of Business Process Management (BPM) is

to help business people to manage these changes.

Business process management is defined as the

cap

ability to discover, design, deploy, execute,

interact, operate, optimize and analyze process in a

way that is complete, doing it at the business design

level and not at the technical implementation level

(Smith, et al., 2002).

BPM offers numerous benefits to organizations

suc

h as improving the speed of business, giving

increased customer satisfaction, process integrity

and accountability. It promotes process optimization,

at the same time eliminating unnecessary tasks. It

also includes customers and partners alike in the

business processes and provides organizational

agility.

BPM represents a “third wave” in business

ocess engineering. The first wave was guided by

process papers that reorganized human activity. The

second wave focused on reengineering of business

processes and the use of Enterprise Resource

Planning (ERP). The third wave centers on formal

business process models and the ability to modify

and combine those models so as to align business

process with organizational needs (Frankel, 2003).

BPM starts with proce

ss modeling. Process

modeling is a business-driven exercise in which

current and proposed process flows are documented

in detail, linked to quantifiable performance metrics,

and optimized through simulation analysis.

Standards for process modeling languages are the

key to the attaining of BPM’s goal as well as in

achieving the platform independence of the process

models. Platform independence is one of the

principles on which Model Driven Engineering

(MDE) is based. The combination of both concepts,

MDE and BPM, is the target of this systematic

review.

MDE was conceived in an effort to solve several

roblems that have arisen in the last decade. On one

hand, the growth of platform complexity, there being

thousands of classes and methods with very

complicated dependencies. On the other hand, we

118

Manuel Perez J., Ruiz F. and Piattini M. (2006).

MDE FOR BPM - A Systematic Review.

In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Software and Data Technologies, pages 118-124

DOI: 10.5220/0001310901180124

 SciTePress

can observe the continuous technological evolution

of the systems, forcing programmers to modify the

system code every time a new requirement is given.

In the MDE paradigm, every concept must be

modeled. Thus, any change in the system must be

shown in the model that represents that system. To

model the systems, MDE proposes using Domain-

Specific Modeling Languages (DSML). By means of

these languages, different modeling notations for

each kind of system are achieved. Thus, the software

engineer has specific tools for modeling all kind of

systems.

Another important concept in MDE is model

transformation. By transforming models, the

evolution of the systems is facilitated. A model

could be transformed to another model or to a XML

specification as well as to the source code that

implements the model functionality.

The OMG group has developed Model Driven

Architecture (MDA) as an example of MDE. MDA

emerged with the established idea of separating the

business logic specification of a system from the

platform specific details in which the system is

implemented (Miller, et al. 2003).

MDA adds some concepts to the MDE

philosophy. MDA defines three level of abstraction.

The Computational Independent Model (CIM), the

Platform Independent Model (PIM) and the Platform

Specific Model (PSM).

The key technology in MDA is MOF, as it is as

in the definition of metamodels, which are MOF

instances (figure 1) (Bézivin, 2003). The

transformations among these models are the basis of

MDA philosophy.

Figure 1: MOF metamodels structure (Bézivin, 2003).

The structure of this paper is as follows. In

section 2, systematic reviews are introduced. In

section 3, the carrying out of the review is shown in

part, presenting the selection of studies and the

classification of these. The information analysis is

described in section 4 by summarizing the different

authors’ proposals about the MDE for BPM

application. Section 5 presents the conclusions

extracted from the systematic review along with

future work, taking into account the different views

found.

2 SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS

A systematic review of the literature is a means of

identifying, evaluating and interpreting all available

research relevant to a particular research question, or

topic area, or phenomenon of interest (Kitchenham,

2004).

Systematic review is a scientific methodology

that can be used to integrate empirical research on

software engineering (Travassos, 2005).

Some of the characteristics that make the above

methodology different from a conventional review

are that a systematic review starts by defining a

review protocol that specifies the research question,

along with the methods and the criteria to drive the

review. Added to all this, a systematic review is

based on a search strategy that aims to detect as

much relevant literature as possible. Moreover,

performing a systematic review is needed in order to

document the whole search strategy so that another

researcher can replicate the same review with

identical results.

There are three main phases that organize the

different stages of the review process.

The phase called “planning the review” has as its

purpose to identify the need for this study and to see

through the development of a review protocol. A

researcher may need a systematic review to be able

to draw more general conclusions about a

phenomenon or as a prelude to further research

activities.

The protocol specifies the methods that will be

used to undertake a specific systematic review. A

pre-defined protocol is needed to avoid the

possibility of researcher bias. Without a protocol, the

selection of individual studies might possibly be

driven by the expectations of the researcher.

When the whole planning is done, the review can

start. This is the second phase, called “conducting

the review”. This phase lies in the identification of

research, the selection of primary studies, the quality

assessment study, data extraction and monitoring,

together with data synthesis.

Firstly, the researcher must search the documents

by using the strings specified in the protocol. When

a first potential set of primary studies is obtained,

the researcher must perform a selection by assessing

MDE FOR BPM - A Systematic Review

119

Table 1: Studies Selection.

Author, date Study name Source

Roser and Bauer (2005)

A Categorization of Collaborative

Business Process Modeling

Techniques

IEEE Digital Library

Zeng, et al. (2005)

Model-Driven Business Performance

Management

IEEE Digital Library

Pfadenhauer, et al (2005)

Comparison of Two Distinctive

Model Driven Web Service

Orchestration Proposals

IEEE Digital Library

Rosen (2004) SOA, BPM and MDA ACM Digital Library

Frankel (2005) BPMI and OMG: The BPM Merger Business Process Trends

Harmon (2004)

The OMG's Model Driven

Architecture and BPM

Business Process Trends

Frankel (2003)

BPM and MDA: The Rise of Model-

Driven Enterprise Systems

Business Process Trends

Smith (2003)

BPM and MDA: Competitor,

Alternatives or Complementary

Business Process Trends

Kano, et al. (2005)

Analysis and simulation of business

solutions in a service-oriented

architecture

Wiley Digital Library

MEGA & Standard Bodies (2004)

Business Process Modeling and

Standardization

bpmg.org

the studies’ actual relevance. Quality assessment

must be done over the selected studies. As the result

of assessing the information quality, according to the

criteria defined in the protocol, a new set of studies

is generated.

Finally, the data synthesis provides researchers

with the results of the systematic review. The

synthesis may be either quantitative or descriptive.

The last phase lies in the communication of the

results. Usually the systematic review is reported in

at least two formats: In a technical report or in a

section of a PhD thesis as well as in a journal or

conference paper.

3 REVIEW RESULTS

This section presents the selected works in the

searches performed in the digital libraries, journals

and internet sites related to the issue in hand.

Moreover, a classification of studies is given. This

has used aspects which are of relevance to the goal

of the review as a basis for this classification

3.1 Studies Selection

The first step was to search in the predefined

information sources. Those sources are: ACM digital

library, IEEE digital library, Science Direct Digital

Library, Business Source Premier, Wiley

InterScience, www.BPTrends.com, www.bpmg.org.

The result of this search was a first set,

composed of 22 studies. With the aim of tuning the

set of studies, the selection criteria were applied.

The studies had to contain information about the

application of model driven engineering or model

driven architecture in business process management.

The issue of the systematic review is MDE for BPM,

but because MDA is currently so widespread in the

model engineering world, MDA was included in the

selection criteria.

As the result of the application of selection

criteria, the new set of studies was composed of 10

works (Table 1).

3.2 Classification of Studies

The selected studies have been classified according

to several aspects that have been chosen to satisfy

the goal of the systematic review (Table 2).

First of all, the author’s opinion about the issue

of systematic review is the most important aspect to

take into account in classifying the studies. Another

important aspect is whether the study offers a

proposal about the use of CIM, PIM and PSM

(MDA models) within the business process context.

This means that the author suggests a specific

utilization of MDA models, pointing out the possible

modeling standards used in each model. Finally, the

different standards proposed by authors for

modeling business process are also aspects that are

taken into account.

ICSOFT 2006 - INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE AND DATA TECHNOLOGIES

120

Table 2: Classification of the selected studies.

Author, date

MDE

for

BPM

Propose

CIM,

PIM, &

PSM

UML

BPML

BPMN

BPDM

BPEL

J2EE

Others

Roser and Bauer (2005) Yes Yes X X X X X ebXML, AIRIS, WS-CDL

Zeng, et al. 2005 Yes No X X

Pfadenhauer, et al. (2005) Yes Partially X X X

Rosen (2004) Yes Yes X X X X

Frankel (2005) Yes No X X X X SBVR

Harmon (2004) Yes Yes X X X X X SBVR

Frankel (2003) Yes No X X X X

Smith (2003) No No X X

Kano, et al. (2005) Yes Yes X X X

MEGA & Standard Bodies (2004) Yes No X X X X XPDL

4 FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

This systematic review goal is to identify studies

that can provide an approach for the application of

the MDE paradigm to business process management.

Note that from here on in the text, MDA will be the

modeling approach that will always be mentioned,

whereas MDE will not. This is because MDA is the

most widely-seen example of MDE application, and

because all the papers deal specifically with MDA,

and not with MDE in general.

The article “BPM and MDA: Competitors,

Alternatives or Complementary” (Smith, 2003), does

not share the optimism of the rest of the authors. In

Smith’s opinion, BPM and MDA are very different.

He declares that MDA must be used by software

engineers and that BPM must be used by business

people. He also affirms that the latter are not

interested in a new approach for developing more

software, but rather in a design-driven architecture

based on processes and on a business process

management system (BPMS) that interprets such

designs, in the same way that RDBMS interprets a

relational model. Although he does not deny the

possibility that in the future the two philosophies

may work together, at the moment he advocates the

separation of both approaches.

The work “Model-Driven Business Performance

Management” (Zeng, et al., 2005) proposes a

technical approach for developing a complete

application related to the BPM context. This study

presents a relation between the two important

concepts

of this systematic review, using a model-

driven approach to build the solution. The technical

approach is based on the observation metamodel and

its transformations. When the models are

transformed, the approach suggests compiling the

operational aspects of the model and finally

developing a runtime engine that interprets the

model and executes the generated code.

The study ”Comparison of Two Distinctive

Model Driven Web Service Orchestration

Proposals” (Pfadenhauer, et al., 2005) focuses on the

way to generate a set of web services that implement

the organization business processes. By applying the

MDA approach, and using some of the business

process standards, the final solution is generated.

This document mentions the BPDM standard as the

MDA BPM connection.

The article “Analysis and simulation of business

solutions in a service-oriented architecture” (M.

Kano, 2005), offers a four-layer model architecture,

in which the first two layers, when viewed together,

are similar to the CIM layer in MDA from the

business point of view rather than from the software

MDE FOR BPM - A Systematic Review

121

Figure 2: Use of OMG BPDM (Harmon, 2004).

system point of view. The last two layers correspond

directly to the MDA PIM and PSM layers. By

separating the independent platform concerns of a

solution from the specific platform concerns and

their associated code by means of MDA, the reuse of

solution components is supported. Furthermore, the

system is more flexible and adaptable to the changes

in business requirements.

The work “A Categorization of Collaborative

Business Process Modeling Technique” (Roser, et

al. 2005), provides a proposal for applying MDA

within the collaborative business process

framework. Collaborative business processes are

performed among different enterprises, which could

have different business process development

methodologies. Therefore, the creation of a common

framework in which the organizations could

communicate to each other in terms of business

process would be ideal. The authors have spoken

about MDA as the common framework for

integrating business process from different

organizations. They propose to create the business

process CIMs, PIMs and PSMs in every

organization, by using their own model language for

each kind of model. These model languages must be

MOF metamodels. Thus, transformations among

metamodels can be done. The communication

among the enterprises in terms of business process

will be done by means of the common CIMs, PIMs

and PSMs. These common models are written by

using a common metamodel (one for each kind of

model) and contain a view for the models of each

organization from their CIMs, PIMs and PSMs.

Thus, the common framework is well-known for all

the organizations.

The study “Business Process Modeling and

Standardization” (MEGA & Standard Bodies, 2004),

is a review concerning all of the standards existing

around business process, from languages to

modeling notations. It provides a whole view of the

state of standards (as it stood on September 2004),

as well as their coverage within the BPM context.

Moreover, it reports on the capacities of versions of

new standards that are about to come out.

The study “SOA, BPM and MDA” (Rosen,

2004) does not offer a specific proposal for using

MDE within some business process management

areas, but provides an abstract vision about the role

that both MDE and BPM play. The article points out

how MDA can help business process automation,

reuse and maintenance.

The two works by Frankel selected in the

systematic review, concerning MDA and BPM,

(Frankel, 2003 and Frankel, 2005), point to the use

of MDA as the methodology that guides business

process design, implementation, maintenance and

management. Frankel’s theory is that BPM joined to

MDA is stronger than BPM alone, and MDA

together with BPM is stronger than MDA alone.

Moreover, he gives a wide classification of the

different business process standards that currently

exist. He aims at the aligning of the business process

modeling notation (BPMN) with the OMG

metamodel BPDM. This would provide portability

utility by means of the XMI format and the power of

the MDA transformations, in line with the well-

known BPMN standard. Although Frankel is

optimistic about the application of MDA in BPM, he

also warns us about the wide gap that exists between

the abstraction represented by a business process

model and the specific models that represent the

implementation of the business process.

The study “The OMG's Model Driven

Architecture and BPM” (Harmon, 2004), has as its

goal the use of MDA within the BPM. Harmon puts

BPDM at the centre of business process modeling

(Figure 2). The rest of business process modeling

standards should be transformed directly to BPDM,

ICSOFT 2006 - INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE AND DATA TECHNOLOGIES

122

even BPMN. He proposes a way to use the different

kinds of MDA models (CIM, PIM and PSM) for

business process design and implementation. Thus,

CIM will be specified in terms of business process

by using BPDM; the business rules by means of

business rules metamodel (BRM). These models are

used by business analysts. PIM are a transformation

from previous CIM, specified in a software system

metamodel, for example UML. These models are

used by software architects. Finally, PSM are built

by transforming PIM to the platform specific

language in which the business process will be

implemented, for example the J2EE UML Profile.

5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

The systematic review performed provides a

complete view of the proposals and opinions

existing in the recent literature about MDE paradigm

application in business process management.

Most of the works found point to the use of

model driven engineering as a valid approach for

business process management. There are proposals

for the use of MDA in the context of collaborative

business process management, where the model

driven plays the role of integration standard and

allows different organizations to cooperate from a

business process point of view. It is also suggested,

on the other hand, that MDA is the methodology that

drives the organization business process design,

implementation, maintenance and management.

Although most authors are in favor of the use of

MDE in business process management, there is

some rejection of this idea, throwing into relief how

far apart both concepts are, and how difficult it is to

obtain cooperation to achieve better results.

Business process modeling standards become the

key issue for the MDA application in the context of

BPM. These standards must be metamodels, which

are instances of meta-metamodel MOF. OMG

propose the business process definition metamodel

(BPDM) as the standard for business process

modeling, which has no final version yet (OMG,

2003). BPDM is a semantic description of the

logical relations among several elements of any

business process description. It is not a notation. Its

advantage is that it is a MOF metamodel. Thus, any

other notation language, such as BPMN, can be

transformed to BPDM. As BPDM is a MOF

metamodel, this can be transported via XMI to any

business process tool that knows such a metamodel.

The companies only have to define MDA

transformations from the BPDM metamodel to

executable languages like J2EE or BPEL.

BPMN is the notation standard most frequently

used to define business process at a high level. So

some authors are quite adamant in their assertions

that the next version of BPDM will take on the

BPMN standard. Thus, any high level BPMN model

will be able to be shared via XMI and transformed to

follow the MDA methodology.

In future research, we will monitor the evolution

of BPDM and its convergence with the BPMN

standard. We will propose a QVT transformation

from BPMN to BPDM, as well as from BPDM to a

web services metamodel. To do this, the model

management framework MOMENT will be used

(Boronat, et al. 2005).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research has been supported by the project

FAMOSO, partially funded by Ministerio de

Industria, Turismo y Comercio, FIT-340000-2005-

161 Plan Nacional de Investigación Científica,

Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica 2004-2007 and

“Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER)”,

European Union.

REFERENCES

Smith, H., 2002. The emergence of Business Process

Management. CSC’s Research Services.

Frankel, D. S., 2003. BPM and MDA. The rise of model-

driven enterprise systems. Business Process Trends.

Miller, J., Mukerji, J., 2003. MDA Guide Version 1.0.1,

OMG.

Bézivin, J., 2003. MDA: From hype to hope, and reality.

In UML’03. 6th International Conference. ATLAS

Group.

Kitchenham, B., 2004. Procedures for performing

systematic reviews. NICTA Joint Technical Report.

Travassos, G. H., Biolchini, J., Gomes, P., Cruz, A. C.,

2005. Systematic review in software engineering.

Technical Report.

Smith, H., 2003. BPM and MDA: Competitors,

alternatives or complementary. Business Process

Trends.

Zeng, L., Lei, H., Dikun, M., Chang, H., Bhaskaran, K.,

2005. Mode-driven business performance

management. In ICEBE’05. Proceedings of the 2005

IEEE International Conference on e-Business

Engineering. IEEE.

Pfadenhauer, K., Dustdar, S., Kittl, B., 2005. Comparision

of two distinctive model driven web service

MDE FOR BPM - A Systematic Review

123

orchestration proposals. In CECW’05. Proceedings of

the 2005 Seventh IEEE International Conference on

E-Commerce Technology Workshops. IEEE.

Kano, M., Koide, A., Liu, T., Ramachandran, B., 2005.

Analysis and simulation of business solutions in a

service oriented architecture. IBM Systems Journals,

Vol 44, No 4.

Roser, S., Bauer, B., 2005. A categorization of

collaborative business process modeling techniques. .

In CECW’05. Proceedings of the 2005 Seventh IEEE

International Conference on E-Commerce Technology

Workshops. IEEE.

MEGA & Standard Bodies, 2004. Business process

modeling and standarization. Bpmg.org

Rosen, M. 2004. SOA, BPM and MDA. CTO Azora

Technologies.

Frankel, D. S., 2005. BPMI and OMG: The BPM Merger.

Business Process Trends.

Harmon, P., 2004. The OMG’s model driven architecture

and BPM. Business Process Trends.

OMG, 2003. Business Process Definition Metamodel,

Request for Proposal, OMG document, 2003-01-06,

http://www.omg.org/docs/bei/03-01-06.pdf

Boronat, A., Carsí, J. A., Gómez, A., Ramos, I., 2005.

Utilización de Maude desde Eclipse Modeling

Framework para la gestión de modelos. Departament

de Sistemes Informatics i Computacio. Universitat

Politécnica de Valencia.

ICSOFT 2006 - INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE AND DATA TECHNOLOGIES

124