System and method for conducting dependency analysis of business components

• US 20070106520A1
• Filed: 10/11/2005
• Published: 05/10/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/11/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Lee, Juhnyoung, Ivan, Anca-Andreea, Goodwin, Richard, Akkiraju, RamaKalyani
• Application Number:
  US11/247,028
• Publication Number:
  US 20070106520A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0637 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
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06393 Score-carding, benchmarking or key performance indicator [KPI] analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/067 Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions

Abstract

A system and method is provided for the ontological representation of the meta-models of businesses and their processes, activities, and components in one or more semantic web markup languages to enable reasoning and analyzing of instances of enterprise business models to infer relationships of business entities which are previously unknown or not clear from the original business model instance.

Claims

1. A method of analyzing dependencies of components in a component model of a business, comprising:

generating a semantic business model by applying a business meta-model to a description of the business;

presenting to a user a component business model of the business, and receiving from the user an analytical query of the component business model;

executing the query through the semantic business model to provide a response to the query, said executing inferring dependencies among components of the component business model; and

returning the response and said inferred dependencies to the user.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the semantic business model is a meta-model of business components created by capturing semantics of business information and representing the semantics in a semantic markup language.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the semantic markup language is drawn from the group consisting of Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL).

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the semantic business model is generated by reusing an existing business semantic model, the reuse being accomplished using a computer pointing device operation.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the computer pointing device operation makes available to the generated business model business information associated with one or more of business processes, business activities, resources, services, metrics, and KPIs.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the semantic business model includes a universal enterprise layer, an industry layer, and a particular enterprise layer.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein updates to the component business model are propagated across said layers.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein one of said dependencies was inferred by using KPI associations represented in the semantic business model.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein one of said dependencies was inferred by using business process associations represented in the semantic business model.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein one of said dependencies was inferred based on messages sent and received among components as represented in the semantic business model.

11. A system for analyzing dependencies of components in a component model of a business, comprising:

a business model generator for generating a semantic business model by applying a business meta-model to a description of the business;

a business analysis workbench for presenting to a user a component business model of the business, and receiving from the user an analytical query of the component business model;

a semantic engine for executing the query through the semantic business model to provide a response to the query, said executing inferring dependencies among components of the component business model; and

means for returning the response and said inferred dependencies to the user via said workbench.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the semantic business model is a meta-model of business components created by capturing semantics of business information and representing the semantics in a semantic markup language.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the semantic markup language is drawn from the group consisting of Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL).

14. The system of claim 11, wherein the semantic business model is generated by reusing an existing business semantic model, the reuse being accomplished using a computer pointing device operation.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the computer pointing device operation makes available to the generated business model business information associated with one or more of business processes, business activities, resources, services, metrics, and KPIs.

16. The system of claim 11, wherein the semantic business model includes a universal enterprise layer, an industry layer, and a particular enterprise layer.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein updates to the component business model are propagated across said layers.

18. The system of claim 11, wherein one of said dependencies was inferred by using KPI associations represented in the semantic business model.

19. The system of claim 11, wherein one of said dependencies was inferred by using business process associations represented in the semantic business model.

20. The system of claim 11, wherein one of said dependencies was inferred based on messages sent and received among components as represented in the semantic business model.

21. Implementing a service for analyzing dependencies of components in a component model of a business, comprising the method of:

generating a semantic business model by applying a business meta-model to a description of the business;

presenting to a user a component business model of the business, and receiving from the user an analytical query of the component business model;

executing the query through the semantic business model to provide a response to the query, said executing inferring dependencies among components of the component business model; and

returning the response and said inferred dependencies to the user.

22. A computer implemented system for analyzing dependencies of components in a component model of a business, comprising:

first computer code for generating a semantic business model by applying a business meta-model to a description of the business;

second computer code for presenting to a user a component business model of the business, and receiving from the user an analytical query of the component business model;

third computer code for executing the query through the semantic business model to provide a response to the query, said executing inferring dependencies among components of the component business model; and

fourth computer code for returning the response and said inferred dependencies to the user.