the 6th learning diary, Business Process Integration

It has been around half a month after the deadline mentioned (DL Wednesday 19th of December at 9 am), Finally realized that the last learning diary is still needed to be done.

According to my workload from the course, I feel I have deserved 2 - 3 grade from the course.

Based on reviewing the paper "Integrating a Ruby on Rails Application with Siebel Using Java Messaging System" written by Timo Jalonen, Matti Kokkola. I think it is a good quality paper presenting idea on integration between the Siebel CRM-databases and the trust-registry application. Beside the good side of paper, I would like give a few comments on it.

1) The background is a bit short for someone does not have any background of trust-registry application and Sibel. Especially, For all the abbreviations, I suggested author should list at the beginning of paper.

2) For the Research problem and objectives of the research part, please adjust the academy way to present research problem.

3)I would like to see the Sequence diagrams which can present data sync between the Siebel CRM-databases and the trust-registry application.


one thing I have so far learned from this course is to write a scientific report to prepare for the master's thesis. If I could discuss more what I have learn, it is the business process integration with current technologies and tools.

5th learning diary, Business Process Integration

* Based on lectures so far, what is the relationship between processes and messages (business process, business message)
* What are the main risks in the project work?
* Do you have preference on what other project you want to review?

For this 5th learning diary, I just got information yesterday when I explored the course page. I am going to write a short diary in this time.

According to my knowledge I have gotten from lectures, The business processes are defined for the organization way to achieve the business targets (BPEL can be used for the business process definition), messages are important information delivered through different business unit(entity), no matter they are internal or external. I see the relationship between processes and messages like engine, income and outcome. The business process is like a engine take messages (interpretation) as income, then bring out messages for others. As we know, the messages should be understood among all participants. It needs to be standardized.

The main risk in our project is that we do not have so much experience and knowledge on different standard of finance. especially, we are going to do Financial Ontology based on different standards. The lack of experience is our the main risk. But, no matter how hard it is, I still need get through this. otherwise, I am not able to accomplish my school degree next year.


For getting more knowledge and information, I would like to see some useful study cases related our project topic. for example, where could I get information to know what and how standard used in the Finnish OMX Helsinki. How Financial Ontology are in using currently.

4th learning diary, Business Process Integration

#Reflect the lectures so far - do they support the project work?
#Take an article. Do backwards and forward citation analyses and see if authors have written other relevant papers (take e.g. some of the articles used in the course or the one you located yourselves).


During the almost one month period of lecture, we have had different lectures from different area. For my project purpose, I concern about Financial processes & messages in different standards (RosettaNet,UBL, ACORD, SEPA,..). We only had RosettaNet related content in the lecture, our group has to do own research on UBL, ACORD and SEPA. Generally, the lectures do support the project work.

Citation analyses
Akerman, A., Tyree, J., 2006. Using Ontology to Support development of Software Architectures. IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 45, No. 4, pp. 813-825.

I do not understand what is the purpose of doing backwards and forward citation analyses. But I took a bit time to read the article quickly, I found the paper is very useful. I have a question in my mind, how to find authors have written other relevant papers? I use the author's name to look for other relevant papers, it seems there are lots of same names as the author's name, so, it is hard to find it. I do not know whether i use the right way to do the searching.

Interview and Schedule Part

• Interview

Mr. Jouni Lähteenmäki fromProject planProject plan OP bank group will be our instructor. We will have some interview with him to ask opinions about the paper scope,different standards on the financial field and so on. For more details of interview, it will be discussed in the group meeting. The meeting times with Lähteenmäki depends on his and our needs.

• Schedule

Our working schedule is really based on the course time table.

1. Weekly checkpoint meeting for checking work status and defining tasks
   
2. Interview meeting --> TBD
   
3. 5/11/2007. draft version finished: the objective done: map of the financial field
4. 10/12/2007 final version finished: second objective done

Current_Programming project CVS setting

export CVS_RSH=ssh
export CVSEDITOR=pico
export CVSROOT=:ext:'your username'@relander.cs.hut.fi:/u/2/wtao/.cvsroot/

More information you could refer to: http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~dbutler/tutorials/winter96/cvs/

How to put a project under CVS?

A simple program consisting of multiple files is in /class/bfennema/project.


To put this program under cvs first

cd to /class/bfennema/project

Next

cvs import -m "Sample Program" project sample start

CVS should respond with
N project/Makefile
N project/main.c
N project/bar.c
N project/foo.c

No conflicts created by this import

How to check out the project?
HINT: cvs checkout project

Business Process Integration, 3rd learning diary, DL Monday 8th of October at 9 am.

• Look up at least one possible reference to your project topic using scientific databases or scholar google.
• Pick a potential research method (literature, case, constructive/design research). Summarise the paper.
• Form a question on research methodologies that you want an answer to.

Topic: Financial ontology

1. Financial processes & messages in different standards (RosettaNet,UBL, ACORD, SEPA,..) and their analyses
   
2. Creating a universal data model (ontology) for this domain
3. Partly guidance from financial company
4. There was interested group of 4 people: Jukka, Kaisa, Tuomo, Tao
   

Mr. Paavo Kotinurmi gives us the following instruction:

For some background information on standards relevant to bank/insurance
companies.

Maksuliikealue (payments/invoices):
- Finvoice, http://www.pankkiyhdistys.fi/finvoice/
- EU:n maksupalveludirektiivi
- ISO20022-sanomastandardi
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eeurope/i2010/docs/studies/eei-3.2-e
-invoicing_final_report.pdf
Bo Haralds blog also source for information: http://boharald.blogspot.com/

Financial reporting:
- XBRL, http://www.xbrl.org/Home/

Insurances:
- acord, http://www.acord.org/

E-government message standards:
- NES, Northern European Subset of UBL

Other standards
- e.g RosettaNet, UBL (invoice)
- For RosettaNEt PIPs, see e.g.
http://www.soberit.hut.fi/T-86/T-86.300/2004/nordea_S_Toivonen.pdf

Ontologia-reference framework:
- REA (possible formal upper level ontology), see e.g.
http://www.msu.edu/user/mccarth4/rea-ontology/
- Sumo (another possible formal upper level ontology),
http://suo.ieee.org/SUO/SUMO/index.html

I can provide some references on how e.g. RosettaNet contents can be mapped
to SUMO.

Basic assumptions behind this project:

• You can shed light to how these different standards and ontologies relateto each other.
• Are they competing/complementary
• Currently its very brobably that these different standards specify the same thing in slightly different way
  

• The integration challenge for a bank is to support such wide variety of standards

• Is there a merged data model that can represent this information needed in different standards?

• Ideal information is to have an internal higher level presentation ofthe needed information that can be mapped to specific standards
  

• Banks/insurance companies work with many industries and need tointegrate information not only from other banks, but also companies, publicsector etc. This makes their position very challenging - can this be managed without point-to-point chaos?
  

Its clear that during one fall, such a financial ontology will not be ready. But this assignment should pave a way towards it. Being able to represent this problematics well and have the basic information on these standards is a contribution towards such a data model (ontology).

Probably not all these standards listed are not going to be handled in detail. Starting point would be that this work is to do constructive/design research based on this case requirements towards a common ontology.

Steps could be:

1. Small analyses of the big picture with all these standards
2. Selecting standards for which the group concentrates - course &

Osuuspankki can help this

• Going deeper to selected specifications - seeing semantic similarities/differences & working towards a common view on information
  

• Presenting analyses results for comments for expert opinion

• Recommendations for future - how this should be continued.

Comments on some potential research methods: ANALYZING THE PAST TO PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE: WRITING A LITERATURE REVIEW

I think I will use the "literature view" research method in our paper.

According to "Literature review "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which gives following explanation.

"A Literature review is a body of text that aims to review the critical points of current knowledge on a particular topic.

Most often associated with science-oriented literature, such as a thesis, the literature review usually precedes a research proposal, methodology and results section. Its ultimate goal is to bring the reader up to date with current literature on a topic and forms the basis for another goal, such as the justification for future research in the area.

A good literature review is characterized by: a logical flow of ideas; current and relevant references with consistent, appropriate referencing style; proper use of terminology; and an unbiased and comprehensive view of the previous research on the topic.

According to Cooper (1988) "a literature review uses as its database reports of primary or original scholarship, and does not report new primary scholarship itself. The primary reports used in the literature may be verbal, but in the vast majority of cases reports are written documents. The types of scholarship may be empirical, theoretical, critical/analytic, or methodological in nature. Second a literature review seeks to describe, summarise, evaluate, clarify and/or integrate the content of primary reports". "

Based on the summary of "ANALYZING THE PAST TO PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE: WRITING A LITERATURE REVIEW", An ideal article should have:

• motivates the research topic and explains the reviews contributions

• describes the key concepts

• delineates the boundaries of the research

• reviews relevant prior literature in IS and related areas

• develops a model to guide future research

• justifies propositions by presenting theoretical explanations, past empirical findings, and practical examples

• presents concluding implications for researchers and managers.

Form a question on research methodologies that you want an answer to.

How to find suitable articles related to your research topics? how to combine the literature review and case study to write a good paper?

2nd learning diary for T-86.5161

I just arrived in Helsinki from another city, I was not able to access internet at weekend in order to put my diary in my blog.

There is a group (I think I will be with them) is interested in Financial ontology, which is about:

1) Financial processes & messages in different standards (RosettaNet,
UBL, ACORD, SEPA,..) and their analyses
2) Creating a universal data model (ontology) for this domain
3) Partly guidance from financial company

Hopefully, I could get more detailed information about this topic. The reason why I am interested in the topic related to Financial stuff is I have some finance education background and would like to study Financial processes and message in different standards. Is that easy and possible to create a universal data model for this domain? Is there any research on it?

Coomments :

• Damodaran: B2B Integration over the Internet with XML – RosettaNet Successes and Challenges

This paper introduces the B2B transaction components, PIP and PIP structure. It also discusses PIP message interface structure. I agree PIP specifications must have more machine-readable content to further these improvements, after all, PIP message is so complicated that human is hard to read it. RosettaNet is currently working on the challenges to makinig the execution of the buiness process more more efficient, try to increase automation further reduces errors and related costs (modular PIPs)

• Damodaran:RosettaNet: Adoption Brings New Problems, New Solutions

I think this paper is quite same as "Damodaran: B2B Integration over the Internet with XML – RosettaNet Successes and Challenges". The main content is about how to standardize the configuration of RNIF (RosettaNet implementation framework) for reducing cost by using existence of technology.