Adaptive SOA stack-based business process monitoring platform

Abstract

Executable business processes that formally describe company activities are well placed in the SOA environment, as they allow for the declarative organization of high-level system logic. However, to fully benefit from that element of abstraction, appropriate business process monitoring systems are required for both technical and non-technical users. Unfortunately, current solutions remain unsatisfactory. This paper discusses the problem of business process monitoring in the context of the service orientation paradigm, in order to propose an architectural solution and provide implementation of a system for business process monitoring that alleviate the shortcomings of the existing solutions. Various platforms have been investigated to obtain a broader view of the monitoring problem and to gather functional and non-functional requirements. These requirements constitute input for further analysis and system design. The monitoring software is then implemented and evaluated according to the specified criteria. An extensible business process monitoring system was designed and built on top of OSGiMM – a dynamic, event-driven, configurable communications layer that provides real-time monitoring capabilities for various types of resources. The system was tested against the stated functional requirements, and its implementation provides a starting point for further work. It has been concluded that providing a uniform business process monitoring solution that satisfies a wide range of users and business process platform vendors is a difficult endeavor. It is furthermore reasoned that only an extensible, open source monitoring platform based on a scalable communication core has a chance to address all current and future requirements.