Business process automationBusiness process automation (BPA), also known as business automation, is the technology-enabled automation of business processes. It can streamline a business for simplicity, achieve digital transformation, increase service quality, improve service delivery, or contain costs. BPA consists of integrating applications, restructuring labor resources, and using software applications throughout the organization. Robotic process automation is an emerging field within BPA.
Workflow management systemA workflow management system (WfMS or WFMS) provides an infrastructure for the set-up, performance and monitoring of a defined sequence of tasks, arranged as a workflow application. There are several international standards-setting bodies in the field of workflow management: Workflow Management Coalition World Wide Web Consortium Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards WS-BPEL 2.0 (integration-centric) and WS-BPEL4People (human task-centric) published by OASIS Standards Body.
Quantum complexity theoryQuantum complexity theory is the subfield of computational complexity theory that deals with complexity classes defined using quantum computers, a computational model based on quantum mechanics. It studies the hardness of computational problems in relation to these complexity classes, as well as the relationship between quantum complexity classes and classical (i.e., non-quantum) complexity classes. Two important quantum complexity classes are BQP and QMA.
Scientific workflow systemA scientific workflow system is a specialized form of a workflow management system designed specifically to compose and execute a series of computational or data manipulation steps, or workflow, in a scientific application. Distributed scientists can collaborate on conducting large scale scientific experiments and knowledge discovery applications using distributed systems of computing resources, data sets, and devices. Scientific workflow systems play an important role in enabling this vision.
Parameterized complexityIn computer science, parameterized complexity is a branch of computational complexity theory that focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty with respect to multiple parameters of the input or output. The complexity of a problem is then measured as a function of those parameters. This allows the classification of NP-hard problems on a finer scale than in the classical setting, where the complexity of a problem is only measured as a function of the number of bits in the input.
Service-oriented architectureIn software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. A service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and updated independently, such as retrieving a credit card statement online.
P (complexity)In computational complexity theory, P, also known as PTIME or DTIME(nO(1)), is a fundamental complexity class. It contains all decision problems that can be solved by a deterministic Turing machine using a polynomial amount of computation time, or polynomial time. Cobham's thesis holds that P is the class of computational problems that are "efficiently solvable" or "tractable". This is inexact: in practice, some problems not known to be in P have practical solutions, and some that are in P do not, but this is a useful rule of thumb.
Circuit complexityIn theoretical computer science, circuit complexity is a branch of computational complexity theory in which Boolean functions are classified according to the size or depth of the Boolean circuits that compute them. A related notion is the circuit complexity of a recursive language that is decided by a uniform family of circuits (see below). Proving lower bounds on size of Boolean circuits computing explicit Boolean functions is a popular approach to separating complexity classes.
Advice (complexity)In computational complexity theory, an advice string is an extra input to a Turing machine that is allowed to depend on the length n of the input, but not on the input itself. A decision problem is in the complexity class P/f(n) if there is a polynomial time Turing machine M with the following property: for any n, there is an advice string A of length f(n) such that, for any input x of length n, the machine M correctly decides the problem on the input x, given x and A.
Service-orientationService-orientation is a design paradigm for computer software in the form of services. The principles of service-oriented design stress the separation of concerns in the software. Applying service-orientation results in units of software partitioned into discrete, autonomous, and network-accessible units, each designed to solve an individual concern. These units qualify as services. Service-orientation has received a lot of attention since 2003 due to the benefits it promises.
