Daniel Ritter

Homer Walke, Daniel Ritter, Carl Trimbach et al.

Finite linear temporal logic ($\mathsf{LTL}_f$) is a powerful formal representation for modeling temporal sequences. We address the problem of learning a compact $\mathsf{LTL}_f$ formula from labeled traces of system behavior. We propose a novel neural network operator and evaluate the resulting architecture, Neural$\mathsf{LTL}_f$. Our approach includes a specialized recurrent filter, designed to subsume $\mathsf{LTL}_f$ temporal operators, to learn a highly accurate classifier for traces. Then, it discretizes the activations and extracts the truth table represented by the learned weights. This truth table is converted to symbolic form and returned as the learned formula. Experiments on randomly generated $\mathsf{LTL}_f$ formulas show Neural$\mathsf{LTL}_f$ scales to larger formula sizes than existing approaches and maintains high accuracy even in the presence of noise.

Simon Hacks, Robert Lagerström, Daniel Ritter

Process digitization and integration is an increasing need for enterprises, while cyber-attacks denote a growing threat. Using the Business Process Management Notation (BPMN) is common to handle the digital and integration focus within and across organizations. In other parts of the same companies, threat modeling and attack graphs are used for analyzing the security posture and resilience. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to use attack graph simulations on processes represented in BPMN. Our contributions are the identification of BPMN's attack surface, a mapping of BPMN elements to concepts in a Meta Attack Language (MAL)-based Domain-Specific Language (DSL), called coreLang, and a prototype to demonstrate our approach in a case study using a real-world invoice integration process. The study shows that non-invasively enriching BPMN instances with cybersecurity analysis through attack graphs is possible without much human expert input. The resulting insights into potential vulnerabilities could be beneficial for the process modelers.

Daniel Ritter

Integration as a service (INTaaS) is the centrepiece of current corporate, cloud and device integration processes. Thereby, compositions of integration patterns denote the required integration logic as integration processes, currently running in single-clouds. While multicloud settings gain importance, their promised freedom of selecting the best option for a specific problem is currently not realized as well as security constraints are handled in a cost-intensive manner for the INTaaS vendors, leading to security vs. costs goal conflicts, and intransparent to the process modeler. In this work, we propose a design-time placement for processes in multiclouds that is cost-optimal for INTaaS problem sizes, and respects configurable security constraints of their customers. To make the solution tractable for larger, productive INTaaS processes, it is relaxed by using a local search heuristic, and complemented by correctness-preserving model decomposition. This allows for a novel perspective on cost-aware process modeling from a process modeler's perspective. The multicloud process placement is evaluated on real-world integration processes with respect to cost- and runtime-efficiency, and discusses interesting trade-offs. The process modeler's perspective is investigated based on a new cost-aware modeling process, featuring the interaction between the user and the INTaaS vendor through ad-hoc multicloud cost calculation and correctness-preserving, process cost reduction proposals.

Marco Montali, Andrey Rivkin, Daniel Ritter

The previous works on formalizing enterprise application integration (EAI) scenarios showed an emerging need for setting up formal foundations for integration patterns, the EAI building blocks, in order to facilitate the model-driven development and ensure its correctness. So far, the formalization requirements were focusing on more "conventional" integration scenarios, in which control-flow, transactional persistent data and time aspects were considered. However, none of these works took into consideration another arising EAI trend that covers social and multimedia computing. In this work we propose a Petri net-based formalism that addresses requirements arising from the multimedia domain. We also demonstrate realizations of one of the most frequently used multimedia patterns and discuss which implications our formal proposal may bring into the area of the multimedia EAI development.

Daniel Ritter, Fredrik Nordvall Forsberg, Stefanie Rinderle-Ma et al.

The discipline of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is the centrepiece of current on-premise, cloud and device integration scenarios. However, the building blocks of integration scenarios, i.e., essentially a composition of Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIPs), are only informally described, and thus their composition takes place in an informal, ad-hoc manner. This leads to several issues including a currently missing optimization of application integration scenarios. In this work, we collect and briefly explain the usage of process optimizations from the literature for integration scenario processes as catalog.

Daniel Ritter, Stefanie Rinderle-Ma, Marco Montali et al.

Enterprise application integration (EAI) solutions are the centrepiece of current enterprise IT architectures (e.g., cloud and mobile computing, business networks), however, require the formalization of their building blocks, represented by integration patterns, verification and optimization. This work serves as an instructive pattern formalization catalog that leads to the formalization of all currently known integration patterns. Therefore, we explain the classification of the underlying requirements of the pattern semantics and formalize representative patterns from the different categories, by realizing them in timed db-net. In this way, the catalog will allow for the addition of future patterns by assigning them to a category and applying the described formalism.

Daniel Ritter, Stefanie Rinderle-Ma

Cloud computing is one of the most exciting IT trends nowadays. It poses several challenges on application integration with respect to, for example, security. In this work we collect and categorize several new integration patterns and pattern solutions with a focus on cloud integration requirements. Their evidence and examples are based on extensive literature and system reviews.

Daniel Ritter, Manuel Holzleitner

Integration Adapters are a fundamental part of an integration system, since they provide (business) applications access to its messaging channel. However, their modeling and configuration remain under-represented. In previous work, the integration control and data flow syntax and semantics have been expressed in the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) as a semantic model for message-based integration, while adapter and the related quality of service modeling were left for further studies. In this work we specify common adapter capabilities and derive general modeling patterns, for which we define a compliant representation in BPMN. The patterns extend previous work by the adapter flow, evaluated syntactically and semantically for common adapter characteristics.

Daniel Ritter

Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP) are a collection of widely used stencils for integrating enterprise applications and business processes. These patterns represent a "de-facto" standard reference for design decisions when integrating enterprise applications. For each of these patterns we present the integration semantics (model) and the conceptual translation (syntax) to the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), which is a "de-facto" standard for modelling business process semantics and their runtime behavior.

Daniel Ritter

The discovery, representation and reconstruction of (technical) integration networks from Network Mining (NM) raw data is a difficult problem for enterprises. This is due to large and complex IT landscapes within and across enterprise boundaries, heterogeneous technology stacks, and fragmented data. To remain competitive, visibility into the enterprise and partner IT networks on different, interrelated abstraction levels is desirable. We present an approach to represent and reconstruct the integration networks from NM raw data using logic programming based on first-order logic. The raw data expressed as integration network model is represented as facts, on which rules are applied to reconstruct the network. We have built a system that is used to apply this approach to real-world enterprise landscapes and we report on our experience with this system.