Towards semantic modelling of business processes for networked enterprises Karol Furdik 1, Marian Mach 2, Tomas Sabol 3 1 InterSoft, a.s., Florianska 19, Kosice, Slovakia 2 Dept. of Cybernetics and AI, Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia 3 Faculty of Economics, Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009

Contents DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009  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

Motivation DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009  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 (FP , eEconomy services, semantic interoperability;  TrustCom (FP , framework for Virtual Organisations;  OPUCE (FP , service environment, infrastructure for collaborative and dynamic loosely coupled services;  SUPER (FP , 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 facts DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009  SPIKE: Secure Process-oriented Integrative Service Infrastructure for Networked Enterprises  Web:  FP7 ICT EU project, FP  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) DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009 Networked Enterprise SPIKE Conceptual Layer

SPIKE vision (2) DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009 Networked Enterprise SPIKE Conceptual Layer SPIKE Service Layer

Architecture - system components DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009

Data elements DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009

Semantic annotation DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009  Association of a data portion with the ontology concepts

Business process modelling DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009  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 framework DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009  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) DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009 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) DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009 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 BPM DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009  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 ( for general ontology maintenance  Annotation tool for semantic annotation of information resources

Steps of semantic BPM in SPIKE DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 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) DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September Input: Textual description & basic process schema: 2. Controlled vocabulary: Concepts identified with their properties: 3. WSML Ontology created:

Example: Identity federation AC (2) DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 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:

Conclusions DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009  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? DEXA EC-Web 09 : 10th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies Linz, Austria, September 2009 More info: