Semantic reengineering of business processes

2007

Abstract The Web Service Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) is the de facto standard for describing workflow-like compositions of Web services, so-called Web service orchestrations. In this paper an ontology for executable BPEL processes is presented, which reflects both the natural language description and the syntax given in the specification. The ontology makes BPEL process models accessible at a semantic level and thus to intelligent queries and machine reasoning. Key words: BPM, BPEL, ontology, semantics, WSML

Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2014

Coloured Petri Nets (CPNs) have formal semantics and can describe any type of workflow system, behavioral and syntax wise simultaneously. They are widely studied and successfully applied in modelling of workflows and workflow systems. There is an inherent problem regarding business processes modelled with CPNs sharing and subsequently their reuse need to be considered. The Semantic Web technologies, such as ontologies, with their characteristics demonstrate that they can play an important role in this scenario. In this paper, we propose an ontological approach for representing business models in a meta-knowledge base. Firstly, the CPN ontology is defined to represent CPNs with OWL DL. Secondly, we introduce four basic types of manipulation operations on process models used to develop and modify business workflow patterns. To the best of our knowledge, representing business process definitions and business workflow patterns as knowledge based upon ontologies is a novel approach.

2009

Abstract In this paper we describe the Business Process Modelling Ontology (BPMO), which is part of an approach to modelling business processes at the semantic level, integrating knowledge about the organisational context, workflow activities and Semantic Web Services.

2013

Understanding and specifying business processes is a challenge. Many different approaches have been developed, each with their own specific business process modelling languages designed to meet a business specific requirements. In practice, however, multiple business process languages are often being used within one and the same enterprise. This paper proposes a universal and language independent abstraction of the concepts of today's mainstream business process modelling languages, in a unified ontology based on an analysis of seven popular business process modelling approaches. Generic concepts are identified and a unified meta-model designed. An ontological analysis of the representational capability of this meta-model is examined in relation to the Bunge-Wand-Weber ontology. This meta-model is open to further extensions such as incorporating requirements or extending into a knowledge base.

Understanding and specifying business processes is a challenge. Many different approaches have been developed, each with their own specific business process modelling languages designed to meet a business specific requirements. In practice, however, multiple business process languages are often being used within one and the same enterprise. This paper proposes a universal and language independent abstraction of the concepts of today's mainstream business process modelling languages, in a unified ontology based on an analysis of seven popular business process modelling approaches. Generic concepts are identified and a unified meta-model designed. An ontological analysis of the representational capability of this meta-model is examined in relation to the Bunge-Wand-Weber ontology. This meta-model is open to further extensions such as incorporating requirements or extending into a knowledge base.

Handbook on Business Process Management 1, 2010

Even though process orientation/BPM is a widely accepted paradigm with heavy impact on industry and research the available technology does not support the business professionals' tasks in an appropriate manner that is in a way allowing processes modeling using concepts from the business domain. This results in a gap between the business people expertise and the IT knowledge required. The current trend in bridging this gap is to utilize technologies developed for the Semantic Web, for example ontologies, while maintaining reusability and flexibility of processes. In this chapter the authors present an overview of existing technologies, supporting the BPM lifecycle, and focus on potential benefits Semantic Web technologies can bring to BPM. The authors will show how these technologies help automate the transition between the inherently separate/detached business professionals' level and the IT level without the burden of additional knowledge acquisition on behalf of the business professionals. As background information they briefly discuss existing process modeling notations like the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) as well as the execution centric Business Process Execution Language (BPEL),

IASI-CNR, Technical Report, 2010

This report intends to lay the formal foundations of a framework for the semantic augmentation of BP schemas, in order to provide a declarative representation of workflow models, enriched with domain knowledge encoded by means of computational ontologies. The proposed framework is centered around BPAL (Business Process Abstract Language), a logic-based language for modeling and reason with both the structural specification and the dynamic behavior of a business process from a workflow perspective. BPAL relies on a formalism, logic programming, that is particularly well-suited for its use within a wider knowledge representation framework, in particular in conjunction with rule based ontology languages to capture the semantics of a business scenario. The resulting Business Process Knowledge Base provides a uniform and formal representation framework, suited for automatic reasoning and equipped with a powerful inference mechanism supported by the solutions developed in the area of Logic Programming. At the same time it has been conceived to be used in conjunction with the existing BP management tools as an "add-on" facility, by supporting BPMN, in particular its XPDL linear form, as a modeling notation, and OWL, for the definition of the reference ontologies.

Business process models mostly exist without a corresponding reference ontology of the business and its domain, or without semantic specifications of their basic tasks to be executed through software. This work shows our 'big picture' of integrated support for modeling business processes in BPMN 2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation). It illustrates representing semantic information of such business processes and its links. So, this paper presents our comprehensive integration of executable business process models represented in BPMN 2.0 with semantic concept and service task specifications. Our integration can be used for model verification and generation, as well as model execution with assigned (software) services (or objects).

2005

Ontologies present a state-of-the-art technology for the provision of machine-readable semantics. Its utilization for the annotation of end-to-end enterprise/industrial processes characterizing advanced collaborative business models, largely contributes to enterprise interoperability, flexibility and component reusability. Our work in this paper emphasizes on the use of ontologies in combination with workflows for business process modeling and presents an associated methodology and architecture

2004

Designing, analyzing and managing complex processes are recently become crucial issues in most application contexts, such as ecommerce, business process (re-)engineering, Web/grid computing. In this paper, we propose a framework that supports the designer in the definition and in the analysis of complex processes by means of several facilities for reusing, customizing and generalizing existent process components. To this aim we tightly integrate process models with a domain ontology and an activity ontology, so providing a semantic vision of the application context and of the processes themselves. Moreover, the framework is equipped with a set of techniques providing for advanced functionalities, which can be very useful when building and analyzing process models, such as consistency checking, interactive ontology navigation, automatic (re)discovering of process models. A software architecture fully supporting our framework is also presented and discussed.