MA Abschlussvortrag, Paul Hübner, Ort: O27/521, Zeit: 13:30 Uhr, Datum: 9. Februar 2012

An important but neglect aspect of Business Process Management (BPM) are the user interfaces required for human interactions during process execution. Moreover, user interfaces design and implementation requires a notable amount of all BPM related development efforts. Therefore in this thesis a model-driven approach for the overall automated generation of complex user interfaces for activity-based process models has been developed. A component-based Transformation Model is the core part of this approach. The components follow the separation of concerns principle of model-driven development.
The core component provides a hierarchical set of Transformation Patterns. Thereby Elementary Transformation Patterns (ETP) handle the aspects of user interface generation of single process activities. Supplemented by Complex Transformation Patterns (CTP) to transform complex process model fragments to user interfaces. These Patterns are supplemented with an advanced Grouping Mechanism, e.g., to enable the generation of role specific user interfaces. Through a Mapping Meta Model, the Transformation Model describes an overall generic Transformation Algorithm to generate complex user interface based on process models. In addition the Transformation Model enables a bidirectional propagation of user interface based changes to a process model and vice versa. These change propagation capabilities are the basis for more advanced features like user interface modification during the run-time of processes and retrospective modification of process control-flow.
As a proof of concept parts of the Transformation Model, more precisely, the Transformation Patterns, the grouping aspect and the overall Transformation Algorithm have been implemented in a prototype. Tests based on different use cases resulted in an overall automated approach for the generation of role-specific complex user interface for complete process models.