MPhil Thesis Defence


"Business Process Atomicity Analysis Supporting Late Task Property
Bindings"

By

Miss Yuet Mei Lo


Abstract

Atomicity imposes an all-or-nothing requirement on the observable effects
of a business process. Two major properties of each task in an atomic
process are the assurance to compensate, and complete the task during
failure recovery. These task properties are conditionally specified when
some parameters of the process are to be determined during the process
execution. Such a situation occurs when an organization like DELL wants to
postpone decisions on suppliers and shippers whenever foreign exchange
rates fluctuate. Since the business terms adopted by suppliers and
shippers may vary, task properties are to be determined during the process
execution time. This, however, leads to challenges in the evaluation and
enforcement of business process atomicity. To address this problem, we
present a rigorous approach to examine if the atomicity of a business
process is guaranteed under different possible bindings of its task
properties. The proposed approach is useful as a proactive measure to
prevent violation of atomicity due to dynamic changes of these properties.
These concepts are illustrated by a customer service process of a computer
company that provides assembly, delivery and installation of computer
sets.


Date:				Tuesday, 16 August 2005

Time:				10:30a.m.-12:30p.m.

Venue:				Room 2464
				Lifts 25-26

Committee Members:		Dr. Shing Chi Cheung (Supervisor)
                        	Prof. Frederick Lochovsky (Chairperson)
                        	Dr. Jogesh Muppala


**** ALL are Welcome ****