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Astract: Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is based on the standardization of business document types. Usually, a standard business document type is defined in an all-embracing manner covering all elements needed in any business context, such as geopolitical context, industry context, and others. Before exchanging business documents in a particular business context, business partners have to agree on an implementation guide resulting in a subset of the standard document type. Different subsets of a standard document type may also be considered as variants of the standard document type. Since no agreed methodology for building variants of standard documents types exists, the domain of EDI may learn from Software Engineering. In fact, we are facing the need for managing variants which is typically addressed in Software Configuration Management. In this position paper, we propose utilizing concepts from Product Line Engineering (PLE) for managing variability in business document models. Therefore, we present the challenges encountered in managing variability in business documents. Furthermore, we provide a profound discussion why concepts from PLE are promising for managing business document variants.

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Astract: The United Nations Centre for Trace Facilitation and eBusiness (UN/CEFACT) provides a conceptual approach named Core Components for defining business document types based on generic, reusable building blocks. For facilitating interoperability in Electronic Data Interchange, these reusable building blocks are defined in an all-embracing manner. Accordingly, business partners customize the standard business document types for fitting their needs and requirements, resulting in different business document type variants. However, the approach is missing sufficient mechanisms for managing business document model variants. First, customizing standardized business document types is purely based on a textual specification. Second, the variability present within the Core Component approach lacks an explicit representation. In this paper, we aim at making variability explicit as well as adding a formal aspect to the business document type customization process by employing variability concepts from Product Line Engineering. Furthermore, based on having explicit variability models, business partners are provided with an approach for customizing business document types through configuring variability models.

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Astract: Despite standardization efforts the seamless exchange of business documents often poses a problem, due to a large number of different formats. Also, there may be several standards initiatives in the same business domain, all equally important. Consequently, transformation between various document formats on the instance layer becomes necessary. To ease the implementation of transformers we propose an XSLT-based generation framework that allows for bidirectional transformations. Furthermore, we rely on Core Components as an intermediary format. As a proof of concept we developed a prototype based on the open source tool named VIENNA Add-In.

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Astract: The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Commerce provides a conceptual approach named Core Components for defining business document models based on reusable building blocks. For the application in concrete business scenarios, these building blocks need customizing, resulting in different variants of business document models. In previous work we have proven the application of concepts from Model-Driven Product Line Engineering to manage the resulting business document model variants. However, due to the highly dynamic environment of electronic commerce with ever-changing market requirements, business document models evolve over time. This adds another dimension of variability to the problem domain leading to complex evolution scenarios. In this paper, we define evolution patterns for capturing the different types of evolution present in the context of business document model variants. Having such patterns at hand, makes the different types of evolution in business document models more tangible.

Keywords: Complex Event Processing, Event-Based Systems, Event-Pattern Rules, Reactive Rules, Rule Management, State Management, Pattern Modeling
Astract: Complex Event Processing (CEP) using event-pattern rules has emerged a new paradigm for automated, event-driven decision making. Yet, despite the vast potential CEP offers for agile business applications, its practical relevance rises and falls with the manageability within the organizational framework conditions of an enterprise.
In this thesis, we present a novel rule management framework for event-based systems. It caters to the needs of IT experts as well as technically less experienced domain experts through complementary, yet clearly decoupled workflows. IT experts model event-pattern rules in a single, comprehensive model, in parallel and fully integrated with the other elements of an event-processing application. The rule-management workflow for business users, by contrast, builds upon a sophisticated system of configurable building blocks of pattern-detection and reaction logic. Prepared by technically versed domain experts according to the general requirements of an application scenario, these building blocks can be assembled to concrete event-pattern rules by business users in a way that entirely abstracts from underlying complexity.
Other contributions of our work are novel approaches to entity-based state management and hierarchical pattern modeling. Entity-based state management enables the rule-based monitoring of complex, durable entities such as counters, queues, or customer accounts. Hierarchical pattern modeling enables users to compose complex event patterns from smaller, easier-to-understand sub-patterns. Both approaches naturally complement the proposed rule-management framework.
The presented concepts are thoroughly evaluated for technical feasibility, applicability, and utility in practical business scenarios.
Technical feasibility is demonstrated through their successful implementation as part of the event-processing framework Sense-and-Respond Infrastructure (SARI). Applicability and utility are demonstrated by means of a real-world event-processing application for event-based service assurance and a case study conducted at a leading manufacturer for agricultural machinery.