Submitted by Setor de Tratamento da Informa??o - BC/PUCRS (tede2@pucrs.br) on 2016-02-11T10:02:20Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DIS_CARLOS_HENRIQUE_SCHWARTZHAUPT_COMPLETO.pdf: 10047218 bytes, checksum: d80e43b57d4dd75a40e7d48c32e4e2c4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-11T10:02:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DIS_CARLOS_HENRIQUE_SCHWARTZHAUPT_COMPLETO.pdf: 10047218 bytes, checksum: d80e43b57d4dd75a40e7d48c32e4e2c4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2001-08-29 / Inside organizational environments, it is necessary to have software tools to support the administrative work. It is important to follow the work being done by the actors (humans or information systems) because they have specific characteristics and work jointly as teams. The evaluation of actors? productivity is fundamental. In computing, the computational technology that supports the management of this flow of work is called Workflow automation. This work introduces a model for accompanying the productivity of actors, taking into consideration several intrinsic aspects of the current Gregorian calendar, actors? hours and their appointments. This approach intends to cover these aspects that the Workflow standards do not cover, even the description standard and the execution one. We consider such aspects essential for the productivity evaluation of actors. Contributions of this research are a model for representing calendar and the actors? hours, a model for scheduling appointments and the integration of these models within the Workflow description and execution standards. / No atual cen?rio organizacional, ? necess?rio dispor de ferramentas computacionais para a sobreviv?ncia das organiza??es. Cada organiza??o precisa acompanhar a produtividade de seus atores, pessoas ou sistemas. Tais atores t?m caracter?sticas individuais e trabalham em equipe, justificando a necessidade de m?todos e t?cnicas para acompanhamento do fluxo do trabalho. Em computa??o, o suporte computacional para acompanhar e controlar esse fluxo de trabalho ? chamado de Automa??o de Workflow. Este trabalho apresenta um modelo de acompanhamento da produtividade de atores que leva em considera??o v?rias propriedades intr?nsecas do calend?rio em vigor (gregoriano), e dos hor?rios de trabalho dos atores e de suas agendas de compromissos. Esta abordagem vem preencher as lacunas deixadas pelos modelos de descri??o e de execu??o de Workflow, ao n?o considerarem seus respectivos hor?rios de trabalho e agendas de compromissos, no momento de avaliar a produtividade dos atores. As contribui??es desta pesquisa s?o: um modelo para representa??o de calend?rios e de hor?rios de atores, um modelo de agendamento de compromissos e a integra??o desses modelos com os modelos de refer?ncia para descri??o e execu??o de Workflows.

Process modelling is a design approach where a system or procedure is decomposed in a number of abstract, independent, but connected processes, and then recomposed into a well-defined workflow specification. Research in formal verification, for its part, and theorem proving in particular, is focused on the rigorous verification of system properties using logical proof. This thesis introduces a systematic methodology for process modelling and composition based on formal verification. Our aim is to augment the numerous benefits of a workflow based specification, such as modularity, separation of concerns, interoperability between heterogeneous (including human-based) components, and optimisation, with the high level of trust provided by formally verified properties, such as type correctness, systematic resource accounting (including exception handling), and deadlock-freedom. More specifically, we focus on bridging the gap between the deeply theoretical proofs-as-processes paradigm and the highly pragmatic tasks of process specification and composition. To accomplish this, we embed the proofs-as-processes paradigm within the modern proof assistant HOL Light. This allows the formal, mechanical translation of Classical Linear Logic (CLL) proofs to p-calculus processes. Our methodology then relies on the specification of abstract processes in CLL terms and their composition using CLL inference. A fully diagrammatic interface is used to guide our developed set of high level, semi-automated reasoning tools, and to perform intuitive composition actions including sequential, parallel, and conditional composition. The end result is a p-calculus specification of the constructed workflow, with guarantees of correctness for the aforementioned properties. We can then apply a visual, step-by-step simulation of this workflow or perform an automated workflow deployment as executable code in the programming language Scala. We apply our methodology to a use-case of a holiday booking web agent and to the modelling of real-world collaboration patterns in healthcare, thus demonstrating the capabilities of our framework and its potential use in a variety of scenarios.

A demanda por alto desempenho é um desafio enfrentado por diversas aplicações científicas. Nesse sentido, ambientes para processamento distribuído, tais como, clusters e grades computacionais, têm sido desenvolvidos para prover suporte ao uso de diversos recursos simultaneamente para uma mesma aplicação. Aplicações computacionalmente intensivas são organizadas em workflows e executadas com suporte de middlewares para abstrair a complexidade de uso de tais ambientes. Em ambientes de grade computacional, a execução de workflows contendo tarefas sequenciais e tarefas com paralelismo interno, obtendo bom desempenho, é um desafio, devido à heterogeneidade e comportamento dinâmico do ambiente. Nesse sentido, o escalonamento de workflows em ambientes de grade computacional é essencial. O problema de escalonamento de tarefas, em sua forma geral, é NPCompleto, dessa forma, o estudo do escalonamento de workflows em ambientes de grade computacional é fundamental para aprimorar a execução de aplicações computacionalmente intensivas. O objetivo dessa tese é propor estratégias de escalonamento de workflows, que exploram os seguintes aspectos: Avaliação da possibilidade de executar cada tarefa com paralelismo interno usando recursos de múltiplos clusters; Adaptação de planos de escalonamento no momento da submissão de novos workflows. Foram desenvolvidas duas estratégias: a primeira é uma estratégia para escalonamento estático de workflows, que considera o ambiente dedicado a execução de um workflow. A segunda foi desenvolvida para ser utilizada em conjunto com a primeira, para melhorar o tempo de resposta de múltiplos workflows que podem ser submetidos em diferentes momentos. As estratégias propostas foram avaliadas em um ambiente de simulação. / The demand for high performance is a common problem in many scientific applications. In this sense, distributed processing environments such as cluster, grid computing and multi-cluster environments have been developed to provide support for the use of several resources simultaneously for the same application. Computationally intensive applications are structured as workflows and executed with the support of middleware to abstract the complexity of using such environments. In grid computing environments the execution of workflows containing sequential and parallel tasks, with good performance is a challenge due to the heterogeneity and dynamic behavior of the environment. In this sense, the scheduling of workflows on grid computing environments is essential. The task scheduling problem in its general form is NP-Complete, in this sense, the study concerning workflow scheduling in grid computing environments is fundamental to improve the performance of computationally intensive applications. The aim of this thesis is to propose strategies for scheduling workflows that exploit the following aspects: Explore the possibility of performing single parallel tasks using multiple clusters; Adaptation plans escalation in accordance with the submission of new workflows. Two strategies were developed: the first one is a strategy for static scheduling of workflows, which considers a dedicated environment to the execution of a workflow. The second one was developed to use in conjunction with the first one, in order to improve the response time of multiple workflows that can be submitted at different times. The proposed strategies were evaluated in a simulation environment.

A utilização da Web com objetivos educacionais e de treinamento, vem se caracterizando como uma das grandes áreas de pesquisa e aplicação da informática no dia-a-dia das pessoas e empresas. A tecnologia de workflow poderá contribuir decisivamente para a qualidade dos cursos na Web, permitindo que a informação seja apresentada de maneira interativa conduzindo o aprendiz a uma atitude dinâmica, transformando-o num elemento ativo que manipula os recursos na seqüência e velocidade desejados, o que contribui para um aprendizado mais eficiente. A utilização de workflow associada a tecnologia de Agentes fornece o potencial de uma navegação não-linear, onde o usuário dispõe de flexibilidade para determinar o fluxo de apresentação das informações, não vinculado a uma cadeia seqüencial de conteúdos que foram hierarquicamente construídos. Neste contexto, o presente trabalho, apresenta um modelo de aluno especificado através de um modelo de Workflow. Este modelo foi alcançado por meio da análise das interações de uma amostra de alunos em um curso na Web, observando a Teoria Cognitiva dos Estilos de Aprendizagem e a ordem de execução das atividades do curso pelos alunos. A finalidade desta modelagem por workflow tem como objetivo contribuir nas atividades de execução, coordenação, monitoramento e adaptação em cursos na Internet. / The use of the Web with educational and training objectives may be identified as one of the great research and application areas of computer science today. The workflow technology will be able to contribute decisively for the quality of the Web courses, allowing the information to be presented in interactive way leading the apprentice to a dynamic attitude, transforming the content management into an active element that manipulates the resources in the desired sequence and speed, contributing for a more efficient learning. The use of dynamic workflows associated the agent technology supplies the potential of a nonlinear navigation, where the user takes profit of system flexibility to determine the flow of presentation of the information, not tied with a sequential chain of contents or a hierarchical structure as they have being constructed. In this context, the present work, develop a student model specified through a workflow model. This model was reached by the analysis of the interactions of a sample of students in a Web course. The Cognitive Theory of the Styles of Learning and the order of execution of the activities of the course for the students have being considered in the model development. The purpose of this workflow modelling was to contribute in the development of a comprehensive model of activities execution, coordination, monitoring and adaptation in courses in the Internet.

Estágio realizado na iPortalMais / Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2008

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores (Major de Telecomunicações). Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2009

The Mack truck principle is the reason a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) document is a good idea – so I was told by my boss in my early days working for Disney ABC Television Group. This principle is quite simple: if the one person who knows how to do the job walks out the door and is hit by a Mack truck, we have a problem; no one else knows how to do what that person did. And when it comes to television operations, that is a huge dilemma! Standard Operating Procedures is a document that lists the step-by-step process for completing tasks in order to, in this case, keep a network on the air. This document would be beneficial in cases of disaster recovery, but it might be just as useful for training new employees or for covering for someone who is out sick. There may be various reasons to go to the SOP, but they all have the same goal: to keep operations working to fulfill the business objective. An SOP for the operations of an entire network would likely fill at least one if not multiple books, so in order to keep this project manageable, I limited the development of the SOP to one department, Traffic Inventory, which is responsible for the commercial and promotional assets which are sold and scheduled to air on any of the Disney cable networks (Disney Channel, DisneyXD, and Disney Junior.) In order to develop an SOP, it was necessary to review the different software programs in use, and understand their purpose and application to the overall operations of the cable networks. This will be a “living” document, meaning updates and changes will be anticipated, requiring constant maintenance of the SOP in order to keep it up to the latest development. In an effort to make it truly useful, multiple screen captures are used, as this provides a more user-friendly tutorial and makes for a more effective “blueprint” to comprehend and follow. By having Standard Operating Procedures on hand, anyone in the department will be able to effectively follow the process for handling the commercial and promotional assets in an efficient manner, with minimal impact on the daily operation of the networks. This will then be a valuable document, helping the business to keep its commitment to both advertisers and viewers, without the fear of Mack trucks.

Organisations have processes to manage their business activities, often referred to as business processes. In today’s competitive global economy, automation of processes with appropriate technology is advantageous. However, the paradox of processes automation is the continuous evolution and change that occurs in business processes. As the business processes evolve and change, the underpinning automated systems need to reflect those changes. Even after a decade of research in the areas of business process automation (BPA) and business process evolution management (BPEM), organisations still find it challenging to manage evolution of automated processes. Therefore, this thesis finds answers to the question of “How can business process evolutions be accurately and effectively reflected in already implemented web-based workflow systems?” In order to provide a holistic solution to the above research question, this research introduces a framework named paradigm of process automation – PoPA framework and discusses its role in managing process evolution. This framework embodies a business process at four levels as pragmatic, semantic, syntactic, and implementation. Each of these levels deals with a distinctive representation of a business process. For example, the pragmatic level represents the contextual artefact elements such as Acts, policies, organisational structures, rules, and guidelines; that define a process, and the syntactic level denotes the models created for the purposes of automation. When a change takes place in any one of the levels of the PoPA framework, it creates a propagating impact on elements in the above-mentioned four levels. This propagation of impact takes place due to constraints, associations, dependencies (CAD) among elements within and across the levels (intra and inter-level CAD). When analysing intra and inter-level CAD most correlations are found to be hierarchical; therefore, a relational database structure is appropriate to capture these hierarchical associations. However, operational processes at the semantic level have complex associations, which are not hierarchical. Therefore, this research proposes to use Kleene Algebra with Test (KAT) for representing CAD at the semantic level. Propagating impact does not exclusively depend on inter and intra-level CAD, but is also closely associated with the nature of evolution. Depending on the nature of evolution, the propagating impact can be categorised as direct, indirect, secondary, and non-cautionary (DISN) impact. These DISN impacts suggest the severity of the propagating impact. The core contribution of this research is the Process Evolution and Change Impact Analysis (PECIA) Model, which enables the management of process evolution accurately and effectively in automated systems. In this research, a process automation project named Online Courses Approval System (OCAS) is used as an exploratory case study. The practical utility of the PECIA Model is validated using evolution scenarios of OCAS and epistemic utility is analysed based on a study of the literature. Amidst a plethora of literature on BPA and BPEM, this research is significant due to the following theoretical contributions that facilitate in managing automated processes in tandem with organisational process evolution: ���� PECIA Model holistically captures inter and intra-level CAD of process elements facilitating the propagating impact analysis within and across the four levels of the PoPA framework. • A novel use of KAT to capture CAD among process elements cohesively and completely into linear expressions, in order to analyse the impact propagation. • An algorithm that analyses KAT expressions of a process, to locate DISN impacts so that evolutions can be carried out accurately and effectively. The future works that arise from this work are manifold. These may include improving the use of the PECIA Model as a corporate process knowledge repository, and exploring possible other uses of the PECIA Model and KAT based process expressions. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>This paper gives an overview of workflow management systems (WfMSs) and their security requirements with focus on access mechanisms. It is a descriptive paper in which we examine the state of the art of workflow systems, describe what security risks affect WfMSs in particular, and how these can be diminiuished.</p><p>WfMSs manage, illustrate and support business processes. They contribute to the performance, automation and optimization of processes, which is important in the global economy today. The security of process flows is important, since the sensitive business data need to be protected to inhibit illegal activities, such as blackmailing, imitation and fraud and to provide for good customer service.</p><p>This paper focuses on access mechanisms, because they are basic security mechanisms used by WfMSs assuring that only authorized users are provided access to data and resources. Also because of the unsecurity of the Internet, which is commonly used as infrastructure of Workflow systems, additional security mechanisms, such as PKIs, digital signatures and SSL have to be used to provide secure workflows.</p><p>Depending on the particular requirements in workflow systems, different extensional access control (AC) mechanisms have been developed to maintain security. But when it comes to commercially used WfMSs, the availability of the system is of utmost importance. It is the prerequisite for the system to be employed by companies. The problem is that there is always a trade-off between availability of the system and security. Because this trade off is generally solved in favor of availability, a major part of the developed AC mechanisms are not used in commercially used WfMS.</p><p>After the first part of this paper which is rather theoretical, we examine a commercial WfMS, namely IBM's MQ Workflow , and its security mechanisms. We show vulnerabilities of the system that could be abused by attackers. Afterwards, we show which security mechanisms, in particular, AC mechanisms are provided to secure against threats. We conclude with a summary, which highlights the difference between security concepts developed in the research area and those really implemented by the commercially used WfMS.</p>

<p>The print production workflow consists of various disparate systems — from production equipment to management information systems. During the production of a printed product, information regarding the product must be communicated between the systems in the workflow. Job Definition Format (JDF) is an industry standard that specifies this information interchange. It specifies a digital job ticket format for exchanging administrative and technical information related to a print job, and a messaging protocol for communicating information between the systems in the workflow. This licentiate thesis explores different aspects of integrating systems in a JDF-enabled print production workflow.</p><p>Paper III and Paper IV analyze the properties of JDF’s messaging protocol—Job Messaging Format (JMF)—and discuss design solutions for a JMF integration layer.</p><p>Paper I presents a software tool for simulating systems in the print production workflow. The tool is based on an open source software library, called the Elk Framework, which has been developed within the framework of these licentiate studies. The Elk Framework provides the base services required by a piece of JDF-enabled production equipment, called a Device/Worker in JDF parlance.</p><p>Paper II presents a software tool that was developed for testing the simulation tool presented in Paper I. The test tool, named Alces, can be used for testing if JDF-enabled systems conform to the JDF Specification.</p> / Report code: LIU-TEK-LIC-2006:66.