Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

International Conference on Business Process Management

BPM 2016: Business Process Management pp 329–347Cite as

Untrusted Business Process Monitoring and Execution Using Blockchain

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9850))

Abstract

The integration of business processes across organizations is typically beneficial for all involved parties. However, the lack of trust is often a roadblock. Blockchain is an emerging technology for decentralized and transactional data sharing across a network of untrusted participants. It can be used to find agreement about the shared state of collaborating parties without trusting a central authority or any particular participant. Some blockchain networks also provide a computational infrastructure to run autonomous programs called smart contracts. In this paper, we address the fundamental problem of trust in collaborative process execution using blockchain. We develop a technique to integrate blockchain into the choreography of processes in such a way that no central authority is needed, but trust maintained. Our solution comprises the combination of an intricate set of components, which allow monitoring or coordination of business processes. We implemented our solution and demonstrate its feasibility by applying it to three use case processes. Our evaluation includes the creation of more than 500 smart contracts and the execution over 8,000 blockchain transactions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://youtu.be/1SNn9c5HHQs.

  2. 2.

    http://www.regorous.com/. A subset of the authors is involved in this project.

  3. 3.

    https://etherscan.io/address/0x09890f52cdd5d0743c7d13abe481e705a2706384.

  4. 4.

    Note that, instead of the typical error bars with min and max in box plots, we here show the 1st and the 99th percentile, to reduce the effect of the worst outliers. For Private uncontrolled, the max was 183 s – almost twice as much as the 99th percentile.

References

  1. Carminati, B., Ferrari, E., Tran, N.H.: Secure web service composition with untrusted broker. In: IEEE ICWS, pp. 137–144. IEEE (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Decker, G., Weske, M.: Interaction-centric modeling of process choreographies. Inf. Syst. 36(2), 292–312 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Fdhila, W., Rinderle-Ma, S., Knuplesch, D., Reichert, M.: Change and compliance in collaborative processes. In: IEEE SCC, pp. 162–169 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Flynn, B.B., Huo, B., Zhao, X.: The impact of supply chain integration on performance: a contingency and configuration approach. J. Oper. Manag. 28(1), 58–71 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Kemme, B., Alonso, G.: Database replication: a tale of research across communities. Proc. VLDB Endow. 3(1–2), 5–12 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Li, G., Muthusamy, V., Jacobsen, H.A.: A distributed service-oriented architecture for business process execution. ACM TWEB 4(1), 2 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Mendling, J., Hafner, M.: From WS-CDL choreography to BPEL process orchestration. J. Enterp. Inf. Manag. 21(5), 525–542 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Mont, M.C., Tomasi, L.: A distributed service, adaptive to trust assessment, based on peer-to-peer e-records replication and storage. In: IEEE FTDCS (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Nakamoto, S.: Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf. Accessed 19 July 2015

  10. Narayanan, S., Jayaraman, V., Luo, Y., Swaminathan, J.M.: The antecedents of process integration in business process outsourcing and its effect on firm performance. J. Oper. Manag. 29(1), 3–16 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Object Management Group, June 2010. BPMN 2.0 by Example. www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/20100601/10-06-02.pdf. Version 1.0. Accessed 10 Mar 2016

  12. Omohundro, S.: Cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, and artificial intelligence. AI Matters 1(2), 19–21 (2014)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  13. Panayides, P.M., Lun, Y.V.: The impact of trust on innovativeness and supply chain performance. J. Prod. Econ. 122(1), 35–46 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Snow, P., Deery, B., Lu, J., Johnston, D., Kirby, P.: Business processes secured by immutable audit trails on the blockchain (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Squicciarini, A., Paci, F., Bertino, E.: Trust establishment in the formation of virtual organizations. In: ICDE Workshops, IEEE Computer Society (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Subramanian, S., Thiran, P., Narendra, N., Mostéfaoui, G., Maamar, Z.: On the enhancement of BPEL engines for self-healing composite web services. In: Proceedings of SAINT Symposium, pp. 33–39 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Tschorsch, F., Scheuermann, B.: Bitcoin and beyond: a technical survey on decentralized digital currencies. IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, 2015, 464 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  18. van der Aalst, W., ter Hofstede, A.H.M., Kiepuszewski, B., Barros, A.P.: Workflow patterns. Distrib. Parallel Databases 14(1), 5–51 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. van der Aalst, W.M.P., Dumas, M., Ouyang, C., Rozinat, A., Verbeek, E.: Conformance checking of service behavior. ACM Trans. Internet Technol. 8(3) (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  20. van der Aalst, W.M.P., Weske, M.: The P2P approach to interorganizational workflows. In: Dittrich, K.R., Geppert, A., Norrie, M. (eds.) CAiSE 2001. LNCS, vol. 2068, pp. 140–159. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Viriyasitavat, W., Martin, A.: In the relation of workflow and trust characteristics, and requirements in service workflows. In: Abd Manaf, A., Zeki, A., Zamani, M., Chuprat, S., El-Qawasmeh, E. (eds.) ICIEIS 2011, Part I. CCIS, vol. 251, pp. 492–506. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  22. Weber, I., Haller, J., Mülle, J.: Automated derivation of executable business processes from choreograpies in virtual organizations. Int. J. Bus. Process Integr. Manag. (IJBPIM) 3(2), 85–95 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Weber, I., Xu, X., Riveret, R., Governatori, G., Ponomarev, A., Mendling, J.: Using blockchain to enable untrusted business process monitoring and execution. Technical report UNSW-CSE-TR-09, University of New South Wales (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Zeng, L., Benatallah, B., Ngu, A., Dumas, M., Kalagnanam, J., Chang, H.: QOS-aware middleware for web services composition. IEEE TSE 30(5), 311–327 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Muehlen, M., Recker, J.: How much language is enough? Theoretical and practical use of the business process modeling notation. In: Bellahsène, Z., Léonard, M. (eds.) CAiSE 2008. LNCS, vol. 5074, pp. 465–479. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We thank Chao Li for integrating the trigger prototype with POD-Viz and recording the screencast video.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Data61, CSIRO, Eveleigh, NSW, Australia

    Ingo Weber, Xiwei Xu & Alexander Ponomarev

  2. School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW, Sydney, Australia

    Ingo Weber & Xiwei Xu

  3. Data61, CSIRO, Spring Hill, QLD, Australia

    Régis Riveret & Guido Governatori

  4. Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Jan Mendling

Authors
  1. Ingo Weber
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Xiwei Xu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Régis Riveret
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Guido Governatori
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Alexander Ponomarev
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Jan Mendling
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ingo Weber .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Marcello La Rosa

  2. DFKI, Universität des Saarlandes DFKI, Saarbrücken, Saarland, Germany

    Peter Loos

  3. Universidad Politècnica de Valencia , Valencia, Spain

    Oscar Pastor

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Weber, I., Xu, X., Riveret, R., Governatori, G., Ponomarev, A., Mendling, J. (2016). Untrusted Business Process Monitoring and Execution Using Blockchain. In: La Rosa, M., Loos, P., Pastor, O. (eds) Business Process Management. BPM 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9850. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45348-4_19

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45348-4_19

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-45347-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-45348-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation