Semantic business process management: a vision towards using semantic web services for business process management

Business process management (BPM) is the approach to manage the execution of IT-supported business operations from a business expert's view rather than from a technical perspective. However, the degree of mechanization in BPM is still very limited, creating inertia in the necessary evolution and dynamics of business processes, and BPM does not provide a truly unified view on the process space of an organization. We trace back the problem of mechanization of BPM to an ontological one, i.e. the lack of machine-accessible semantics, and argue that the modeling constructs of semantic Web services frameworks, especially WSMO, are a natural fit to creating such a representation. As a consequence, we propose to combine SWS and BPM and create one consolidated technology, which we call semantic business process management (SBPM

Automatic validation of learning object compositions

Course construction using reusable learning objects is becoming ever more popular due to its’ efficiency. The course creator who uses this methodology may face problems due to the fact that he or she is not as intimately involved in the creation of every element of the course. In this paper we discuss one such problem faced by course creator known as “the competency gap”. Here, we define the competency gap, explain how it can be identified and suggest ways of correcting the problem

Extended enterprise architecture with the FADEE.

Business-to-Business integration (B2Bi) is considered to be not merely an IT-issue, but also a business problem. This paper draws attention to the challenges companies within an Extended Enterprise are confronted with when integrating their systems. We primarily pay attention to coordination problems that may arise. To overcome these problems we propose the use of Enterprise Architecture descriptions. We discuss the powers of using Enterprise Architecture descriptions in integration exercises. It will become clear that doing Enterprise Architecture is no longer an option; it is mandatory. Furthermore, we present the FADEE, the Framework for the Architectural Description of the Extended Enterprise. This framework gives an overview of how companies can apply the Zachman framework to do Enterprise Architecture in the realm of the Extended Enterprise.Architecture; Business-to-Business integration; Companies; Coordination; Enterprise architecture; Extended enterprise; Extended enterprise architecture framework; FADEE; Framework; Integration; Problems; Research; Systems;

Identifying web service integration challenges.

Web services technology promises well for the future of Business-to-Business integration (B2Bi). However, this technology is still in its infancy and the community is facing many challenges. In this paper we discuss some important B2Bi issues and look how web services could play their part in these. Currently, many web services related standards are being drawn up, but most of these are still immature and do not bring a real answer to the proposed challenges. Consequently, many topics for future research can be identified.Information; Requirements; Cognitive; Integration; Community;

Translating semantic web service based business process models

We describe a model-driven translation approach between Semantic Web Service based business process models in the context of the SUPER project. In SUPER we provide a set of business process ontologies for enabling access to the business process space inside the organisation at the semantic level. One major task in this context is to handle the translations between the provided ontologies in order to navigate from different views at the business level to the IT view at the execution level. In this paper we present the results of our translation approach, which transforms instances of BPMO to instances of sBPEL

Towards the Automation of E-Negotiation Processes Based on Web Services - A Modeling Approach

E-Negotiation is the process of conducting negotiations be- tween business partners using electronic means. The interest in e-negotiation is motivated by its potential to provide business partners with more e±cient processes, enabling them to draft better contracts in less time. Most of today's e-marketplaces support some form of e-negotiation. Numerous attempts are being made to design e-marketplaces that support more than one negotiation protocol. The main problem in designing these e-marketplaces is the lack of a systematic approach. In our view, the e-marketplace enforces negotiation protocols and therefore should make them available for consultation by humans and for automation by software agents. Separating the protocols from the e-negotiation media is a step towards a configurable e-marketplace. In this paper we address the requirements for modeling e-negotiation protocols. Then we adopt the Statechart formalism as a modeling language and provide de- scriptions of five commonly used e-negotiation protocols. Finally, we discuss how we move from these Statechart descriptions of the protocols to modeling the interactions between the e-marketplace participants using a web service orchestration language

Semantic model-driven development of web service architectures.

Building service-based architectures has become a major area of interest since the advent of Web services. Modelling these architectures is a central activity. Model-driven development is a recent approach to developing software systems based on the idea of making models the central artefacts for design representation, analysis, and code generation. We propose an ontology-based engineering methodology for semantic model-driven composition and transformation of Web service architectures. Ontology technology as a logic-based knowledge representation and reasoning framework can provide answers to the needs of sharable and reusable semantic models and descriptions needed for service engineering. Based on modelling, composition and code generation techniques for service architectures, our approach provides a methodological framework for ontology-based semantic service architecture