Towards a Constraint-Based Framework for Dynamic Business Process Adaptation

The dynamic unpredictable nature of service-oriented environments demands service-based systems to be inherently flexible and adaptive. In this paper, we propose a constraint-based framework for supporting dynamic business process adaptation. In our framework, process adaptations are performed in a modular way based on process fragments. Process fragments are standalone fragments of processes that can be reused across multiple processes. Processes are composed of a series of fragments. The relationships among fragments are specified in a constraint-based way. The adaptation logic to select concrete fragments is separated from business logic in a process and can be defined in a policy-based approach. Processes are dynamically generated based on the constraints and adaptation policies according to the operating environments, so it is flexible to adapt to the ever-changing operating environments and business requirements. We have implemented a prototype to demonstrate and evaluate our approach.