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There is no doubt that business process management (BPM) has added tremendous value to organizations in virtually every industry. By utilizing business process management systems (BPMS), organizations can streamline and automate tasks, reduce turnaround time, and help ensure regulatory compliance. The foremost considerations when enterprises deploy BPM solutions involve supportive system functions, friendly graphical user interfaces (GUI) and maximal return on investment (ROI), based on the specific processes required, organizational management, and working style of their particular business environment. In order to address the problems associated with BPMS customization, for the flexible coverage of various requirements, this paper takes a three step approach. First, limited customization support of commercial and academic BPMS is reviewed in favor of open source BPMS. Then, advantageous features of uEngine, an open source BPMS which supports flexible customization, are introduced. Finally, API-based and component-based customization in building a BPM application utilizing uEngine is introduced with illustrative examples.

Security services for workflow systems are becoming increasingly important for the interoperability of cross- enterprises in insecure environments. As a security service, the authorization mechanism for confidentiality and integrity has gained growing attention in both the research world and the industry. However, the traditional workflow authorization model (WAM) mainly focuses on the synchronization of authorization flow by using authorization templates (ATs) and is limited in encountering the consequences of workflow changes and/or exceptions, which are very common in today's dynamic business environment. In this paper, we propose an integrated approach of a flexible WAM with dynamic checking features to handle workflow changes and exceptions. Extended temporal role-based access control and flexible workflow authorization template are adopted to further enhance the traditional AT ensuring information confidentiality and integrity. The method of implementing the proposed model is also introduced.

Graphical user interface (GUI) for applications of embedded devices (ED) has been increasingly in demand. Rapid GUI development tools are being required more than ever. However, traditional way of GUI development for ED applications has some limitation in support of visual environment and blocks rapid development. In this paper, we introduce a new mini visual IDE, called VY, which supports rapid development utilizing control library, and simulation of GUI. VY can realize the development of GUI in ED efficiently by means of "what you see is what you get"(WYSIWYG). It consists of five modules: simulator, control library, script complier, script virtual machine (SVM) and visual window. By utilizing the hardware-independent control library of graphical interfaces, an attractive GUI can be produced with much less script effort on the visual window. Then, the script file is compiled into script data (including instructions) which will be executed by the SVM with visiting system calls in ED, and the Simulator will display the resulting GUI. After all these steps, the final GUI can be downloaded into the ED system. In this way, VY supports rapid development of hardware-independent GUI for ED applications on a visual metaphor.

Most data mining (DM) methods reviewed in literature for the factor selection may obtain a number of input factors associated with the interesting response without providing the detailed information, such as relationship between the input factors and response, statistical inferences, and analysis. These DM methods also may not discuss the robustness of solutions, either by considering data preprocesses for outliers and missing values, or by considering uncontrollable noise factors. In order to address these problems, we propose an extended robust data mining (ERDM) model. The main concerns of this model are three-fold. The proposed ERDM conducts outlier test and expectation maximum (EM) algorithm to carry out the data preprocess. The proposed ERDM then reduces the dimensionality to find the significant factors among a large number of input factors using correlation-based feature selection (CBFS) method and best first search (BFS) algorithm. Finally, the proposed model utilizes the theory of robust design to handle the noise factors using the concept of surrogate variable and the response surface methodology (RSM).

Role based access control (RBAC) has received much attention for more than a decade as one of the most attractive solutions for access control in web-based information systems. However, its associated characteristics are often not suitable for a varying organization requiring a flexible structure. In order to address this limitation, it may essentially be required to assess more flexibility to access control mechanisms. To this end, we propose a new extended access control mechanisms incorporating three authentication dimensions based on user, department, and role. We then demonstrate that the proposed mechanisms can improve utilization of a web-based knowledge-sharing system.

Perfomrance analysis is a critical component of workflow system management. Workflow models represented in Petri net have advantages of abundant analysis techniques available. Reachability analysis is useful to detect errorneous states of the business logic, however, it has the problem of state explosion. In this paper, we propose the method of hierarchical reachability analysis for workflow models represented in classical Petri net, even for the cases with cycles. Our method allows analyzing with smaller decomposed reachability graphs, each composed of less places, without losing relevant information. In this way, the proposed method conducts reachability analysis efficiently within each smaller block and with simplified upper layer models after abstraction rather than tracing the large one of the whole model.