towards semantic modelling of business processes for networked enterprises

Towards semantic modelling Towards semantic modelling of business processes of business processes

for networked enterprisesfor networked enterprises

Karol Furdik1, Marian Mach2, Tomas Sabol3

1 InterSoft, a.s., Florianska 19, 040 01 Kosice, [email protected]

2 Dept. of Cybernetics and AI, Technical University of Kosice, [email protected]

3 Faculty of Economics, Technical University of Kosice, [email protected]

DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web TechnologiesLinz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009

ContentsContents


Introduction, motivation

Project SPIKE: basic facts, vision

System architecture, data elements

Principles explained: Semantic annotation

Business process modelling

Ontology design, requirement-driven approach

BP modelling in SPIKE: Technology used

Steps of semantic BP modelling

Example: Identity Federation application case

Conclusions, future work

MotivationMotivation


Approach to the semantic modelling and annotation of BPs as it was designed within the EU project SPIKE to support creation and maintenance of short-term business alliances and

networked enterprises

Related projects: STASIS (FP6-034980, www.stasis-project.net): eEconomy services,

semantic interoperability; TrustCom (FP6-001945, www.eu-trustcom.com): framework for Virtual

Organisations; OPUCE (FP6-034101, www.opuce.tid.es): service environment,

infrastructure for collaborative and dynamic loosely coupled services; SUPER (FP6-026850, www.ip-super.org): modular architecture for

semantic BPM. other projects and research groups focused on SWS, Security, Identity

Management and Privacy, Process-Oriented Knowledge Management, etc.

Project SPIKE - Basic factsProject SPIKE - Basic facts


SPIKE: Secure Process-oriented Integrative Service Infrastructure for Networked Enterprises

Web: www.spike-project.eu FP7 ICT EU project, FP7-2007-217098

FP7-ICT-Call1, Challenge 1 - Pervasive and Trusted Network and Service Infrastructures, ICT in support of the networked enterprise

Duration: 01/2008 – 12/2010 (36 months) Consortium: 8 partners from 5 countries (GE,A,FIN,ESP,SK)

Coordinator: University of Regensburg, GE Budget: 2.8 mil. EUR, EC Contribution: 2 mil. EUR Effort: 351 person-months 3 Pilot applications in Austria and Finland

Main objective: Development of a software service platform for the easy, secure, and fast

start-up of short-term and project-based virtual business alliances.

SPIKE vision (1)SPIKE vision (1)


Networked Enterprise

SPIKE Conceptual Layer

SPIKE vision (2)SPIKE vision (2)


Networked Enterprise

SPIKE Conceptual Layer

SPIKE Service Layer

Architecture - system componentsArchitecture - system components


Data elementsData elements


Semantic annotationSemantic annotation


Association of a data portion with the ontology concepts

Business process modellingBusiness process modelling


Standards: BPMN / BPEL representation

Semantic enhancement: BPMO, sBPMN, sBPEL ontologies outcomes of the FP6 EU project SUPER available in the WSMO platform

Building the semantic BP frameworkBuilding the semantic BP framework


Tasks required: Methodology for designing the ontology

Ontology development, implementation, maintenance

Visual BP modelling, transformation to executable BPEL

Semantic annotation of BP elements (tasks, services)

Resources for the ontology design: Conceptual model, determined by implementation platform (defined data

elements, BPMO, sBPEL, WSMO Lite ontologies)

Existing ontologies (Dublin Core, WSMO ontologies, SKOS, vCard, SIOC,

ontologies of project SUPER, etc.)

User requirements, systematically collected and formalised

Requirement-driven approach (1)Requirement-driven approach (1)


Step 1. Identify the information needs Output: Textual description of the application case.

Step 2. Identify required information quality Output: Specification of the relevant BPs and episodes,

co-operating participants (process actors), activities (services), and artefacts.

Step 3. Create a glossary of topics and terms Output: Glossary of relevant topics and terms in a table

format.

Step 4. Create a controlled vocabulary Output: Controlled vocabulary - hierarchy of terms,

created from the glossary by grouping the terms into the hierarchical subgroups.

Requirement-driven approach (2)Requirement-driven approach (2)


Step 5. Group and relate terms Output: Ontology-like structure that includes the relations

and dependencies between the concepts.

Step 6. Design the resource ontology Output: A formally expressed ontology in WSML format.

Step 7. Implementation of the semantics Output: Formal representation of ontology, enhanced by

the workflow structures. The "business rules" as input and output specifications, conditional if-then-else expressions, loops, and workflow sequences are added as enhancements of the ontology elements.

These enhancements are especially applied to describe a dynamic behavior of services, namely by their choreography, orchestration, and capability interfaces.

Step 8. Validation on real-world data (optional)

Technology for semantic BPMTechnology for semantic BPM


Open Source, Java-based

BPMN/BPEL for BP modelling: BPMO Modeller (of WSMO Studio) for visual BP

modelling

Automatic transformation to the executable BPEL

sBPEL ontology for semantic representation of BPs

WSMO framework for semantic modelling: WSMO Lite - basic conceptual framework

WSML ontology representation

WSMO Studio (www.wsmostudio.org) for general ontology maintenance

Annotation tool for semantic annotation of information resources

Steps of semantic BPM in SPIKESteps of semantic BPM in SPIKE


1. Design of an abstract non-executable business process, using a visual tool for BPMN business process modelling. Specification of the pools and lanes corresponding to the business entities that interact in a collaborative process.

2. Specification of flow objects (events, activities, gateways), connecting objects (sequences, messages, associations), and artefacts (data objects, groups, textual annotations). Specification of the sub-processes for each of the complex activities.

3. Identification of services and their types (Semantic Web services, Web services, electronic services, asynchronous off-line or on-line services) for each of the activities specified in the abstract process.

4. Semantic annotation of services. Specification of the capability interface for services: inputs, outputs, preconditions, effects. Data flow between the services.

5. Identification and semantic description of the information resources (artefacts - documents, messages, etc.) produced or consumed by the services.

6. Automatic transformation into an executable BPEL representation.

7. Rule-based mapping to the BPMO ontology.

8. Identification and semantic description of the actors that are participating as providers or consumers on the services and are manipulating with the artefacts.

Example: Identity federation AC (1)Example: Identity federation AC (1)


1. Input: Textual description & basic process schema:

2. Controlled vocabulary: Concepts identified with their properties: 3. WSML Ontology created:

Example: Identity federation AC (2)Example: Identity federation AC (2)


4. Abstract process model designed:

5. BP implemented in BPMO Modeller, sub-processes, artefacts and services identified and annotated:

6. Resulting BP ontology provided for platform - it is ready for BPEL transformation and execution:

ConclusionsConclusions


Work done so far: User requirements and application cases specified for all the pilots;

Guidelines, methodology and toolchain for semantic mark-up of the processes and resources provided, development of ontologies and BP models is in progress;

Architecture of the platform designed, functional components identified and described in their mutual interactions, detailed specification created, technology frameworks identified, implementation is ongoing.

Future work: System implementation: 1st prototype (09/09) Semantic BP modelling: Development of the resource ontologies and BP

models (09/09) 1st trial of the pilot applications, validation of the SPIKE platform on the

application cases (10-12/09)

Questions?Questions?


More info: http://www.spike-project.eu

towards semantic modelling of business processes for networked enterprises

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