Project Guidelines

Two types of projects are available:

1. Modeling project
2. Research project

These are detailed below. In any case, before starting a project activity, students must contact the lecturer so as to discuss the project idea.

Modeling Project

The goal of a modeling project is to apply the techniques, methodologies and languages seen in the course to a non-trivial domain. The choice of the domain has to be discussed with the lecturer. It is strongly suggested to structure the project report as follows:

• PART 1: collection of data
  1. Textual description of the domain
  2. Description of the information sources
  3. Collection of relevant data (text, figures, tables, drawings, ...) from the selected information sources
  4. Glossary of terms
• PART 2: structural modelling (following CSDP)
  Iterations over these steps:
  1. From raw data to fact types and object types
  2. Basic ORM schema (object types and fact types with readings)
  3. Advanced ORM schema (preferred identification schemes, uniqueness constraints, mandatory participations)
  4. Full ORM schema (with complex constraint and derivation rules)
  N.B.: every step should include a verification phase (to check the inherent correctness of the diagram) and a validation phase (to confront the schema with the collected data)
• PART 3: process modelling
  Iteration over these steps (tentative):
  1. Identification of tasks and (sub)processes
  2. Identification of process participants (lanes and pools)
  3. Connection between tasks and participants (who does what), and between tasks and data (cf. ORM schema)
  4. Basic BPMN diagram
  5. Advanced BPMN diagrams (with exceptional flows, compensations, ...)

Research Project

The goal of a research project is to study and experiment an advanced topic in data and process modeling. Students may bring their own ideas and discuss them with the lecturer. A (non-exhaustive and open) list of possible topics follows:

• Colored Petri nets. Study what colored Petri nets (CPNs) are. Experiment with tools for modeling CPNs and perform different analysis and simulation tasks.
• Adaptive case management. Study what adaptive case management is, then find and experiment a system adopting the adaptive case management paradigm.
• Executable process models. Consider one of the contemporary BPMN process engines (such as Bonita or BizAgi), and present an end-to-end non-trivial example of how a process model and the corresponding data can be made executable inside such an engine.
• Derivation rules. Thoroughly analyzed the theory and modeling practice of derivation rules in ORM.
• Data preparation for process mining. Study how techniques based on conceptual modeling and ontology-based data access can be used to cover the data preparation phase for process mining.
• ORM to UML transformations. Study how ORM diagrams can be sistematically converted into UML+OCL, extending the known ORM to UML techniques so as to take into account advanced ORM constraints. This topic is connected to an ongoing project proposal (contact me or directly Prof. Enrico Franconi if you are interested in this).
• Temporal conceptual modeling. Study how time can be incorporated in structural conceptual modeling, in particular considering ORM as the basis. This could be then lead to a theoretical or pratical investigation, depending on your preferences.
• Organizational modelling. Study how some aspects of an organization may be captured in a conceptual schema so as to properly reflect reality (and the involved physical/legal constraints). Concrete examples: how to model the structure of an organization, the notion of organizational role and of position, the notion of business relationship, the notion of social commitment and saction, ...
• Declarative process modelling. Study the paradigm of constrint-based declarative process modelling, and experiment tools and techniques related to such an approach.

N.B.: this list will be continuously expanded. If you are interested in one of these topics contact immediately the lecturer so as to be assigned to it.