Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 5(b) presents an object data example that represents both the internal and ex-
ternal process models in Figure 5(a). Note that the
WorkTransition
objects with
PMType
=
“INTERNAL” (
w1
to
w11
) denote the work transitions in the internal process model and
the
WorkTransition
objects with
PMType
= “EXTERNAL” (
w12
to
w20
) denote the work
transitions in the external process model. Using the
WorkTransition.PMType
attribute, we
can extract shared activities from the object data example, and thus this object data example
shows how to represent the transportation company's sharing policy toward the online store.
In terms of the XML document, an XML document based on the internal process model
can be easily transformed into an XML document based on the external process model by
removing
Activity
elements corresponding to hidden activities.
To accommodate the activity-level sharing policy, this step introduces the concept
of an external process model and its construction method, and furthermore describes how
to represent the sharing policy and corresponding external process model in the presented
object data model. As a result, this step provides an answer to the fi rst question of the au-
tonomy problem.
Third Step: Composition of an Integrated Process Model
This step describes a method for a participant to merge its internal process model and
an external process model provided by another participant. Such a merged process model is
called an
integrated process model
. The method to compose the integrated process model
is to substitute the process activity in the internal process model with the corresponding
external process model. Earlier in the chapter, it states that the internal process model uses a
process activity to represent the activities of the external process model. Figure 6(a) shows
that the process activity A
1,4
of PM
1
represents the activities of the external process model
of the transportation company. A
1,4
sends a request message to the starting activity, A
2,1
, of
the external process model, and receives a result message from the ending activity, A
2,7
, of
the external process model.
Figure 6: Integrated process model composed by the online store
