An approach to define semantics for BPM systems Interoperability

RICO, M.; CALIUSCO, M. L.; CHIOTTI, O.; GALLI, M. R.

ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS

TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2013 vol. 7 p. 1 - 24

1751-7575

This article proposes defining semantics for Business Process Management systemsinteroperability through the ontology of Electronic Business Documents (EBD) used tointerchange the information required to perform cross-organizational processes. Thesemantic model generated allows aligning enterprise?s business processes to supportcross-organizational processes by matching the business ontology of each businesspartner with the EBD ontology. The result is a flexible software architecture that allowsdynamically defining cross-organizational business processes by reusing the EBDontology.For developing the semantic model, a method is presented, which is based on astrategy for discovering entity features whose interpretation depends on the context,and representing them for enriching the ontology. The proposed method complementsontology learning techniques that can not infer semantic features not represented indata sources. In order to improve the representation of these entity features, the methodproposes using widely accepted ontologies, for representing time entities and relations,physical quantities, measurement units, official country names, and currencies andfunds, among others. When the ontologies reuse is not possible, the method proposesidentifying whether that feature is simple or complex, and defines a strategy to befollowed. An empirical validation of the approach has been performed through a casestudy.