Metrics for BPEL Process Reusability Analysis in a Workflow System
This work addresses the need for early detection of design flaws and aiding architects in judging design alternatives for BPEL processes in workflow systems, though it is incremental as it builds on existing concepts of reusability analysis.
The paper tackles the problem of quantifying the reusability of BPEL processes in workflow systems by proposing a metric based on description and logic mismatch probabilities, with an initial empirical evaluation showing a significant statistical correlation between the metric results and expert judgments.
This work proposes a quantitative metric to analyze potential reusability of a BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) Process. The approach is based on Description and Logic Mismatch Probability of a BPEL Process that will be reused within potential contexts. The mismatch probabilities have been consolidated to a metric formula for quantifying the probability of potential reuse of BPEL processes. An initial empirical evaluation suggests that the proposed metric properly predict potential reusability of BPEL processes. According to the experiment, there exists a significant statistical correlation between results of the metric and the experts judgements. This indicates a predictive dependency between the proposed metric and potential reusability of BPEL processes as a measuring stick for this phenomena. If future studies ascertain these findings by replicating this experiment, the practical implications of such a metric are early detection of the design flaws and aiding architects to judge various design alternatives.