Semantics for Business Processes ManagementAbstract This webpage provides detailed information about tutorials that are held in the course of the SUPER project (homepage: ip-super.org). The tutorial explains and demonstrates how the combination of Business Process Management (BPM) and Semantic Web Services (SWS) can eliminate the deficiencies that current BPM technology exhibits. In particular, it presents the research results and software developments from the SUPER project.
Contents 1 Introduction 2 Tutorial Overview
2.1 Description and Objectives 2.2 Content and Outline
2.3 Target Audience 3 Presentation Events
3.1 ICIW 2007
3.2 ESTC 20073.3 ESWC 2007 3.4 AIMS 2007 3.5 ISWC 2007 3.6 BPM 2007 3.7 ICEC 2008
4 Presenters, Expertise & Experience 1 IntroductionThe tutorial explains and demonstrates how the combination of Business Process Management (BPM) and Semantic Web Services (SWS) can eliminate the deficiencies that current BPM technology exhibits. We present the state of the art in both areas (process modeling and execution in BPM, the SOA concept in BPM, the SWS approach and frameworks, etc.), motivate the need for explicit use of semantics to overcome the current challenges in BPM, and present a consolidated technical framework that integrates SWS into BPM technology. The tutorial will be held as a full day event. The morning session covers the foundations and theoretical aspects, while the afternoon is dedicated to a comprehensive hands-on session wherein the attendees actively model Business Processes and Semantic Web Services with respective software tools. Therewith attendees will gain a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in semantically enriched BPM technology, which is one of the central trends in BPM research and development. The tutorial is held by BPM and SWS experts that actively work on integration of both technologies in the EU-funded SUPER project (homepage: ip-super.org). The following provides an overview of the tutorial (Section 2), information and material for download for the distinct presentation events (Section 3), and biographical information of the people that participate in preparation and presentation of the tutorial (Section 4). 2 Tutorial OverviewThe purpose of the tutorial is to present a consolidated integration of SWS technology into BPM, providing an overview and a solution for the current trend in BPM research and development. The following outlines the background for this research work, explains the structure and content of the tutorial.
2.1 Description and ObjectivesIn general, Business Process Management (BPM) follows a three-phase life cycle: modeling, execution, and analysis of business processes. A central problem for supporting all phases is the integration of IT components within and across enterprises. The current trend for solving this is the use of the SOA paradigm: IT functionality is virtualized in terms of loosely coupled services with stable interfaces. However, even though the combination of BPM and SOA is a very flexible approach for automated support of business processes, there are still several problems to be overcome.
During the modeling phase, processes are created using notations like BPMN and EPC. Their meta-models are incompatible, which hampers the unified use of these notations within and across organizations. Also, commonly business experts use BPM notations different from IT experts: bridging this gap usually requires manual work and is imprecise. Moreover, many organizations maintain a large pool of legacy and newly created process models that are modeled in different notations. This hampers reusability of processes or parts of process models, resulting in missed opportunities to reduce BPM costs. Even though SOA architectures allow the re-use legacy functions via Web services, existing process modeling notations are not flexible enough: only services or sub-processes with known syntactic interfaces can be composed, while the semantics of the tasks in a process model and available functions is disregarded.
During the execution phase, process instances follow the specifications defined at design time. However, in existing BPM execution environments the resolution of the service types specified at design time to particular implementations is hard-coded. This does not reflect important aspects on functional, non-functional, and behavioral aspects of the services. Hence, problems in service usage occur, especially in handling changing service implementations. Also, potentially occurring mismatches may hamper successful process execution. Furthermore, process flexibility and automation requires improvements with respect to ad-hoc changes of processes.
Semantic Web Services (SWS) develop techniques for automated discovery, composition, and execution of Web Services based on richer, semantic descriptions on functional, non-functional, and behavioral aspects. The Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO) is a comprehensive framework for semantically enabled SOA technology. It defines semantic description models for four top level notions along with respective reasoning support for managing these: ontologies, Web services, goals, and mediators. WSMO appears to be a suitable extension to BPM in order to overcome the deficiencies mentioned above as follows:
- Ontologies allow to model processes as well as data as shared conceptual model; their formalization allows semantically enhanced information processing
- Semantic annotations of Web services allow to precisely detect and automatically executed suitable business functionalities as well as to maintain them
- Goals allow to specify processes and tasks on the problem layer for which suitable Web services can be detected dynamically at execution time
- Mediators allow handling potentially occurring mismatches on the data and the
process level, therewith enabling semantically stable interchange within and across enterprises if this is not given in advance.
The aim of the tutorial is to provide attendees with a comprehensive overview of integration of these technologies. The attendees will be provided with respective software in order to model business processes with semantic descriptions for automated Web service usage, and will be trained in their usage within an example of utilisation of SWS in BPM in Polish Telecom (Telekomunikacja Polska S.A.).
2.2 Content and OutlineThe tutorial is usually given as a full day event. The morning session covers the theoretical aspects in form of a lecture style (presentation with slides); the afternoon is dedicated to the hands-on session, including the introduction to the software to be used as well as the use case scenario, and the guided hands-on part where attendees practically work with the presented technologies. Table 1 shows a possible schedule for the tutorial. Below, we outline the structure and content of the individual sections. Table 1: Schedule for Full Day Event | Time | Content | | 09:30 – 10:30 | Section 1: Business Process Management | | 10:30 – 11:00 | Coffee break | | 11:00 – 12:00 | Section 2: Semantic Web Services | | 12:00 – 12:30 | Section 3: Integration – SWS for BPM | | 12:30 – 14:00 | Lunch | | 14:00 – 15:00 | Section 4: Software Demonstration | | 15:00 – 15:30 | Section 5: Hands-On Session (Use Case and Tasks) | | 15:30 – 16:00 | Coffee break | | 16:00 – 17:30 | Section 5: Hands-On Session (Practical Part) | | 17:30 | Wrap-up, Closing | Morning Session: Theory (Lecture Style) (1) Business Process Management The first section gives an overview of Business Process Management (BPM), covering: - Overview: aim, history, common terms - BPM life cycle: Modelling – Execution – Analysis - Modelling notations (BPMN, EPC, etc.) and languages (BPEL4WS, etc.) - Process execution: requirements and existing environments - SOA Architectures for BPM - Current challenges and trends (2) Semantic Web Services This provides an overview of the state of the art in Semantic Web Services SWS). In particular, we present the WSMO framework that serves as the basis for the integration of SWS into BPM technology. This section covers: - Semantic Web Services: approach & history - The Web Service Modeling Ontology WSMO: conceptual model & specification - Semantic techniques for discovery, composition, execution and mediation (3) Integration – SWS for BPM On the basis of the preceding overviews, this section presents the integration approach for BPM and SWS that is developed in the SUPER project. In particular, this covers: - process modeling with semantics (ontologies and formal process languages) - goal-based process modeling and execution for flexible & dynamic BPM - semantically enabled Web Service discovery, composition, and execution in BPM - mediation for BPM: data and process level Afternoon Session: Demonstration & Practical Hands-on (4) Software Demonstration This section introduces and demonstrates the software that will be used for the hands-on session. This consists of the following software developed in the SUPER project: - Semantic Business Process Modelling Tool - Semantic Business Process Execution Environment - SWS execution environments: IRS and WSMX (5) Interactive Hands-On Session The final part of the tutorial is a practical hands-on session. Attendees will actively model and execute semantically described business processes and Web services with the introduced software. The hands-on session will be conducted in groups of attendees (2-4) with guidance from the presenters. We will provide the software for download on the tutorial website (see above), along with detailed installation instructions. Although usually enough attendees have the software installed on their personal laptops, we will bring a sufficient number of computers with the installed software for running the hands-on session.
2.3 Target AudienceThe target audience of the proposed tutorial includes researchers as well as practitioners that work in the areas of BPM or SWS and are interested in the latest technological developments. Although no specific pre-knowledge is required to follow the tutorial, basic knowledge in BPM, ontologies, and Web services may allow better following the tutorial – and for gaining more benefiting from it. However, such basic knowledge can be expected from attendees of the ESWC.
The material to be handed out to the attendees will be a booklet with the tutorial slide set and a CD-R with the software as well as further material. We will also set up a separate web page that will contain all relevant information and material for download.
3 Presentation Events 3.1 ICIW 2007Date:
13 May 2007
Homepage:
http://www.iaria.org/conferences2007/ICIW07.html Presentation Event:
The Second International Conference on The Second International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services (ICIW 2007), Mauritius, May 13 - 19 2007.
Slide Set: Download the full presentation
Additional Information:
• Half day event
3.2 ESTC 2007Date:
31 May 2007
Homepage:
http://www.estc2007.com/
Presentation event:
European Semantic Technologies Conference (ESTC), Vienna, Austria
Slide Set: Download the full presentation Additional Information:
• Half day event 3.3 ESWC 2007Date:
03 June 2007 Homepage:
http://www.eswc2007.org/ Presentation Event:
The 4th European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2007), Innsbruck, Austria, June 3 - 6 2007.
Slide Set: Download the full presentation
Additional Information:
• Half day event
3.4 AIMS 2007Date:
21 June 2007 Homepage:
http://project.iu.hio.no/aims.html Presentation Event:
The Autonomous Infrastructure, Management and Security Conference (AIMS 2007),
Oslo, Norway, June 21 - 23 2007.
Slide Set: Download the full presentation
Additional Information:
• Three hour event
3.5 ISWC 2007Date:
11 November 2007 Homepage:
http://iswc2007.semanticweb.org/worktutorial/TutorialsList.asp Presentation Event:
The 6th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2007),
Busan, Korea, November 11 - 15 2007.
Slide Set: Download the full presentation Hands-on Session - Instructions and Software:
Download materials(zip) Pictures (from the introductory tutorial - introduction to the semantic web):  
Additional Information:
• Three hour event 3.6 BPM 2007Date:
25 September 2007 Homepage:
http://bpm07.fit.qut.edu.au/call/papers/ Presentation Event:
5th International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM 2007),
Brisbane, Australia, September 25 - 27 2007.
Additional Information:
• Three hour event 3.7 ICEC 2008Date:
19 August 2008
Homepage:
http://www.icec08.org/ Presentation Event:
International Conference on Electronic Commerce (ICEC 2008),
Innsbruck, Austria, August 19 - 22 2008.
Slide Set: Download the full presentation
Additional Information:
• Three hour event 4 Presenters, Expertise & ExperienceThe tutorial is presented by experts from leading companies and research industries (see Appendix for biographical details). The software and consulting company IDS Scheer is the worldwide leading provider of Business Process Management solutions, and the IAAS institute headed by Frank Leymann has leading expertise in BPM technology development. KMI and DERI are experts in Semantic Web Services that are involved in the major European and international projects, and are the leading developers of the WSMO framework. The MIS department at the Pozan University of Economics is a leading Polish research center for advanced IT technologies in business information systems. The proposing organizations collaborate on the integration of the presented technologies in the FP 6 Integrated Project SUPER (ip-super.org).
We have gained exhaustive experience in a series of over 20 tutorials on Semantic Web Services that have been held at international events since 2004 (see the detailed documentation at http://www.wsmo.org/TR/d17/). We have received very positive feedback from attendees, especially for the extensive hands-on sessions: people tend to really understand problems and technical solutions when they have to do it themselves.
4.1 Slide set development: - KMI: John Domingue, Carlos Pedrinaci, Barry Norton
- Poznan University of Economics: Agata Filipowska, Adam Walczak, Piotr Stolarski
- IAAS, University of Stuttgart: Dimka Karastoyanova, Jörg Nitzsche, Tammo van Lessen, Zhilei Ma, Frank Leymann, Branimir Wetzstein
- IDS Scheer: Sebastian Stein
- DERI Austria: Michael Stollberg, Dumitru Roman
- DERI Ireland: Maciej Zaremba
4.2 Presenters:
Carlos Pedrinaci (KMI)
Sebastian Stein (IDS Scheer)
Michael Stollberg (DERI Austria)
Sebastian Stein (IDS Scheer)
Barry Norton (OU)
Carlos Pedrinaci (KMI) Branimir Wetzstein (IAAS) Michael Stollberg (DERI Austria) Maciej Zaremba (DERI Ireland)
Marin Dimitrov Agata Filipowska (PUE)
Armin Haller Manfred Hauswirth Armin Haller Carlos Pedrinaci (KMI) Liliana Cabral Michael Stollberg Marin Dimitrov Barry Norton (OU) Agata Filipowska, Monika Kaczmarek (PUE) Jörg Nitzsche (USTUTT)
Armin Haller (DERI Ireland) Srdjan Komazec (STII) Tammo van Lessen (USTUTT)
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