Towards semantic modelling
of business processes
for networked enterprises
Karol Furdik1, Marian Mach2, Tomas Sabol3
1
InterSoft, a.s., Florianska 19, 040 01 Kosice, Slovakia
karol.furdik@intersoft.sk
2
Dept. of Cybernetics and AI, Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia
marian.mach@tuke.sk
3
Faculty of Economics, Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia
tomas.sabol@tuke.sk
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Contents

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
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Motivation

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.
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Project 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.
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
SPIKE vision (1)
Networked
Enterprise
SPIKE
Conceptual
Layer
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
SPIKE vision (2)
Networked
Enterprise
SPIKE
Conceptual
Layer
SPIKE
Service
Layer
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Architecture - system components
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Data elements
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Semantic annotation

Association of a data portion with the ontology concepts
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Business process modelling

Standards: BPMN / BPEL representation

Semantic enhancement: BPMO, sBPMN, sBPEL ontologies


outcomes of the FP6 EU project SUPER
available in the WSMO platform
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Building 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
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
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.
Concept: B2B collaboration prerequisites
Property
Format Description
Organization
ID
A reference to the partner negotiating
a collaboration.
Collaboration
ID
A reference to the collaboration negotiated.
Prior experience with Boolean Indication if the partner has already any
B2B solutions
experience with B2B solutions before
starting a cooperation.
B2B/EDI standards ID list
Listing of references to the possible
used
B2B/EDI standards used, e.g. RosettaNet,
EDIFACT, EDIFICE, etc.
Description of a prior text
Describes the experience of the partners
experience with B2B (optional) within the area of B2B, i.e. which solutions
solutions
or standards have been already used by the
partner within previous projects.
Step 4. Create a controlled vocabulary
Output: Controlled vocabulary - hierarchy of terms,
created from the glossary by grouping the terms into the
hierarchical subgroups.
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
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)
wsmlVariant _"http://www.wsmo.org/wsml/wsml-syntax/wsml-flight"
namespace { _"http://www.spike-project.eu/ontologies/core/v0.0.1#",
wsmostudio _"http://www.wsmostudio.org#",
wsml _"http://www.wsmo.org/wsml/wsml-syntax#",
dc _"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1#" }
ontology contacts_onto
nonFunctionalProperties
dc#language hasValue "en-GB"
dc#subject hasValue "Semantic Business Process Management"
wsmostudio#version hasValue "0.7.3"
dc#description hasValue "WSML Model of the Business Contacts v0
dc#date hasValue _date(2009,5,15,0,0)
endNonFunctionalProperties
importsOntology
{ _"http://ip-super.org/ontologies/organisation/bfo/v1.6.2#",
_"http://ip-super.org/ontologies/organisation/bmo/v1.1.3#",
_"http://ip-super.org/ontologies/organisation/bronto/v1.6.2#"
usesMediator
_"http://example.org/ooMediator"
concept Organisation
nonFunctionalProperties
dc#description hasValue "Abstract definition of an organisation."
endNonFunctionalProperties
Name impliesType _string
Employees impliesType Person
Services_Provided impliesType Service
Contact impliesType Contact
concept Location
Country impliesType _string
Town impliesType _string
ZIP_code impliesType _string
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Technology 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
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Steps 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.
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Example: Identity federation AC (1)
1. Input: Textual description & basic
process schema:
2. Controlled vocabulary: Concepts
identified with their properties:
3. WSML Ontology created:
Concept: B2B collaboration prerequisites
Property
Format Description
Organization
ID
A reference to the partner negotiating
a collaboration.
Collaboration
ID
A reference to the collaboration negotiated.
Prior experience with Boolean Indication if the partner has already any
B2B solutions
experience with B2B solutions before
starting a cooperation.
B2B/EDI standards ID list
Listing of references to the possible
used
B2B/EDI standards used, e.g. RosettaNet,
EDIFACT, EDIFICE, etc.
Description of a prior text
Describes the experience of the partners
experience with B2B (optional) within the area of B2B, i.e. which solutions
solutions
or standards have been already used by the
partner within previous projects.
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Example: Identity federation AC (2)
4. Abstract process model designed:
6. Resulting BP ontology provided for
platform - it is ready for BPEL
transformation and execution:
5. BP implemented in BPMO Modeller, subprocesses, artefacts and services identified
and annotated:
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Conclusions


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)
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009
Questions?
More info: http://www.spike-project.eu
DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Linz, Austria, 1 - 4 September 2009