System and method for business process integration

• US 20060206348A1
• Filed: 06/14/2005
• Published: 09/14/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/11/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Loo, Kaj Van De, Chen, Shuyuan
• Granted Patent: US 8,015,051 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/8
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063 Operations research, analysis or management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06313 Resource planning in a project environment
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06316 Sequencing of tasks or work
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0637 Strategic management or analysis, e.g. setting a goal or target of an organisation; Planning actions based on goals; Analysis or evaluation of effectiveness of goals

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention relate to an automated way for a non-technical person to create or modify software functionality in support of a business process without needing expertise in software. According to the invention, an automated matching tool may apply user input expressed semantically to a database of semantic information associated with syntactic information, to match the user input with a service (e.g., an application program) capable of performing a business process step corresponding to the input.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

semantic data relating to business processes;

syntactic data relating to services for implementing the business processes, the semantic data being associated with the syntactic data;

a matching tool to match user information with the services based on an association between the semantic data and the syntactic data; and

a memory and a processor to respectively store and execute instructions to implement the matching tool.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a modeling tool to provide the user information to the matching tool.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising a registration tool to build the semantic and syntactic data.

4. An automated method comprising:

comparing user input relating to the creation or modification of a step of a business process with data in a database comprising semantic information and syntactic information, and associations therebetween;

on a match between the input and the semantic information, identifying corresponding syntactic information based on the associations; and

from the corresponding syntactic information, identifying a service to implement the creation or modification of the step of the business process.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising presenting results including the identified service to a user.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising ranking a plurality of services included in the results.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising prompting a user to select a service from a plurality of services identified in the results.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising identifying a runtime instance corresponding to the selected service.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising mapping data values between the runtime instance and a second runtime instance.

10. The method of claim 5, further comprising automatically updating the semantic information when the results indicate an absence of a matching service.

11. A machine-readable medium storing program instructions that, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform the method of claim 4.

12. A business process integration system comprising:

a semantic persistent store including information relating to business processes;

a syntactic persistent store including syntactic information relating to services for implementing the business processes;

a modeling tool to receive a user input related to creating or modifying a step of a business process;

a matching tool to search the semantic persistent store and the syntactic persistent store for a service to match the user input; and

a memory and a processor to respectively store and execute instructions to implement the modeling tool and the matching tool.

13. The business process integration system of claim 12, wherein the semantic persistent store includes an association with the syntactic persistent store.

14. The business process integration system of claim 12, wherein the syntactic information includes at least one of an operation, a parameter, or a data type of a service.

15. The business process integration system of claim 12, wherein the semantic persistent store comprises an instance descriptor including information relating to runtime instances of the services.

16. The business process integration system of claim 15, wherein the information relating to runtime instances of the services includes a runtime descriptor that associates information in the semantic data persistent store with a runtime instance.

17. The business process integration system of claim 15, wherein the information relating to runtime instances of the services includes an application framework descriptor that comprises at least one of platform and communication protocol information.

18. The business process integration system of claim 15, wherein the information relating to runtime instances of the services includes an application data transform descriptor that comprises information relating to a transform of data between the services.

19. An automated method comprising:

receiving a user input to effect the creation or modification of a step of a business process;

comparing the input with data in a database comprising associations between semantic terms descriptive of the business process and service runtime instances;

on a match between the semantic terms and the service runtime instances, returning a result to the user identifying the matching service runtime instance.

20. A method for automatic learning in a business process integration system, comprising:

searching a semantic database for matches between user inputs and semantic information relating to business processes; and

in response to detecting incompleteness in the semantic information in a result of the searching, adding new semantic information to the database.