Presentation held during the EOMAS Workshop 2013 in Valencia, ES

1. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
An Approach for a Mutual Integration of the
WoT with Business Processes
A. Ruppen1, S. Meyer2
1University of Fribourg 2SAP Research
Department of Informatics
Software Engineering Group Switzerland
{firstname.lastname}@unifr.ch {firstname.lastname}@sap.com
EOMAS — Valencia
July, 2013

2. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
1 Introduction
2 Including the WoT in a Business Process Model
3 Including Business Process Models in the WoT
4 Conclusion

3. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Outline
1 Introduction
2 Including the WoT in a Business Process Model
3 Including Business Process Models in the WoT
4 Conclusion

4. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
IoT and WoT

5. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
IoT and WoT

6. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
IoT and WoT

7. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Motivation
IoT and WoT
The Internet of Things (IoT) and the WoT (Web of Things)
both try to connect everyday’s objects to the internet.
Both do it in a loosely coupled way.
Whereas there exist no standards for the IoT, the WoT
imposes REST-style architectures to connects Things
together.
Both augment physical objects by giving them a virtual
counterpart.
Interactions can then occur on either the physical side or
the virtual one. However, they should reflect on the other
side.

8. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
IoT and WoT
Example

9. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Resource Oriented Architectures
ROA is not REST
ROA vs. REST
REST and ROA are not the same. This terminology was
introduced by Richardson & Ruby and defines criteria which
make a given web-service REST compliant.

10. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
RESTful Web-services
ROA Principles
Resources
Addressability
Statelessness
Connectedness
Uniform Interface
ROA principles

11. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Outline
1 Introduction
2 Including the WoT in a Business Process Model
3 Including Business Process Models in the WoT
4 Conclusion

12. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Motivation
Enterprise systems support the automation of clearly
planned business processes in a constant and limited
enterprise environment.
The Web of Things however, is constantly changing and
evolving.
Things may appear and disappear at every moment.
WoT envisions REST-style interactions whereas the
BPM-based enterprise research world assumes WS-*
types of services.
At least both approaches share a loosely coupled
approach.
Implementing REST-style interactions in BPM does not
solve the problem (What about WoT devices, physical
Things etc).

13. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Foundations I
WoT Services can be seen as taks:
An Activity is a unit of work performed in the process
If this activity is performed by a resource, and the internal
subpart is not describable it is called "taks".
To take care of WoT specificities it is advised to establish a
sub-class.

14. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Foundations II

15. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Formalization
Integrating the Web of Things I

16. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Validation

17. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Outline
1 Introduction
2 Including the WoT in a Business Process Model
3 Including Business Process Models in the WoT
4 Conclusion

18. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Motivation
In enterprise systems, business processes are a defacto
standard.
This systems are proven to work.
In a near future, this systems won’t be abandoned in favor
of a new standard.
There need to be a coexistence between business
processes and the WoT.
WoT application can benefit from the power delivered by
different business processes.
With the increasing complexity of WoT application, the
clean integration of service components becomes more
important.

19. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Foundations
RESTful architectures are the foundation of the WoT.
We state that it is very possible to embed business process
into the WoT.
Therefore, we face two types of WoT interactions:
Device interactions and
Service interactions.
There is a third type of interaction which is a mix of the two
above.

20. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Formalization
Integrating Business Processes I

21. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Formalization
Integrating Business Processes II
Business Processes are composed of:
some Models,
some resolution infrastructure and
and execution layer.
The WoT and the RESTful façade only interacts with some
parts.
Clients can retrieve or create new models,
Clients can select a previously created model and have it
executed.
However the modeling task is out of the scope of the
RESTful façade and has to be done with more
conventional tools.

22. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Formalization
Integrating Business Processes III
We need at least:
a Resource leveraging the business process to the WoT.
an execution engine.
A client can then get a list of business processes,
He can interact with a particular business process and gain
some insights (still running, finished etc).
Start new executions of business processes.

23. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Formalization
Integrating Business Processes IV
URI Method Meaning
http://.../tasks/
GET
POST
Returns the list of tasks
Creates a new task
http://../tasks/{id}
GET
PUT
DELETE
Returns one task
Modifies one task
Deletes one task

24. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Validation
Example

25. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Outline
1 Introduction
2 Including the WoT in a Business Process Model
3 Including Business Process Models in the WoT
4 Conclusion

26. Outline Introduction Including the WoT in BPM Including BPM in the WoT Conclusion
Conclusion
By the presented work we have shown that it is possible to
integrate the WoT into business processes.
This is a major improvement for business processes since,
in a near future there will be more Things than connected
humans.
We have also shown how the power of existing business
processes can be leveraged to the WoT.
Bringing business processes to the WoT allow it to grow
faster and become a serious player in enterprise
environments.
We have shown the applicability of both integration through
some examples.
Although the examples are not fully functional, they show
the way to go.