Apparatus and method for policy-driven business process exception handling

• US 20050267765A1
• Filed: 05/26/2004
• Published: 12/01/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 05/26/2004
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Zeng, Liangzhao, Lei, Hui, Kumaran, Santhosh, Jeng, Jun-Jang, Chang, Hung-yang, Chung, Jen-Yao
• Application Number:
  US10/853,503
• Publication Number:
  US 20050267765A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06375 Prediction of business process outcome or impact based on a proposed change
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06395 Quality analysis or management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/067 Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

A model-driven and QoS-aware infrastructure facilitates the scalable composition of Web services in highly dynamic environments. An exception management framework supports two modes of exception management for business processes, providing a novel policy-driven approach to exception management implemented in the system infrastructure. Exception management is implemented in the system infrastructure, with exception handling policies supplied by individual business processes. Using the exception management framework, developers define exception policies in a declarative manner. Before a business process is executed, the service composition middleware integrates the exception policies with normal business logic to generate a complete process schema. This policy driven-approach can significantly reduce the development time of business processes through its separation of the development of the business logic and the exception handling policies.

Claims

1. A system for executing business process and handling runtime exceptions, comprising:

an aggregator that is able to integrate normal business logic with exception handling knowledge to generated extended business process definition; and

a business process engine that is able to execute business process definitions that contains knowledge on runtime exception handling.

2. The system in claim 1, further comprising an exception handling policy repository that contains exception handling policies.

3. The system in claim 2, wherein said exception handling policies includes said runtime exception specifications and exception handling action specifications

4. The system in claim 2, wherein said business process engine can understand runtime exception specifications, detect runtime exceptions and execute exception handling actions.

5. A method for executing business processes and handling runtime exceptions, comprising the steps of:

specifying exception handling knowledge from normal business process logic;

integrating normal business logic with exception handling knowledge to generate extended business process definitions;

executing business process definition that contains runtime exception handling knowledge;

detecting runtime exceptions; and

executing exception handling actions.

6. The method in claim 5, further comprising the step of defining exception specification.

7. The method in claim 5, further comprising the step of defining exception handling knowledge as exception handling policies.

8. The method in claim 5, further comprising the step of checking the compatibility between the exception handling policies and normal business logic.

9. The method in claim 5, further comprising the step of checking the conflicts among the exception handling policies.