Mapping of Agents to Subjects in S-BPM

Abstract

This paper presents an extension of the Subject-oriented Business Process Management (S-BPM) methodology to integrate organizational structures and agent assignment mechanisms. While S-BPM offers a robust framework for modeling business processes based on the Parallel Activity Specification Schema (PASS), it lacks explicit constructs for associating organizational agents—such as humans, machines, or services—with process subjects. To address this gap, we propose an enhancement of the S-BPM methodology by incorporating an external organizational model and an Organizational Query Language (OQL) interface. This extension enables fine-grained specification of process initiation permissions, dynamic assignment of agents to subjects, and direct derivation of access rights to business objects from process models. Our approach leverages an organization model server to evaluate OQL expressions at runtime, supporting context-sensitive and rule-based agent selection. We demonstrate how these enhancements facilitate advanced organizational scenarios, such as context-dependent approval processes and multi-agent assignments. By embedding access rights directly into process models, our solution eliminates the need for traditional access control lists. This integration significantly improves automation, compliance, and maintainability in enterprise environments.

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