European Integrated Project

Semantics Utilized for Process Management within and between EnterpRises: Strategic Objectives, Concept, and Results

Frank Leymann, University of Stuttgart

Martin Hepp, University of Innsbruck

Project Overview

IST Project Number : FP6-026850

Funded by the European Commission, IST, Unit E2 Knowledge Management and Content Creation

The Logo

European Integrated Project

The Consortium

■ SAP AG, Germany (Coordinator)■ ETEL AUSTRIA AG, Austria■ IBIS PROF. THOME AG IBIS, Germany■ IBM RESEARCH GMBH, Switzerland■ IDS SCHEER AG, Germany■ INTELLIGENT SOFTWARE COMPONENTS S.A., Spain■ LEOPOLD-FRANZENS UNIVERSITAET INNSBRUCK, Austria■ MIP Consorzio per l'Innovazione nella Gestione delle Imprese e della PA, Italy■ NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND – GALWAY, Ireland■ NEXCOM BULGARIA EAD, Bulgaria■ NIWA-WEB SOLUTIONS NIEDERACHER and WAHLER OEG, Austria■ SIRMA GROUP CORP., Bulgaria■ THE OPEN UNIVERSITY, UK■ Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo Sociedad Anónima Unipersonal, Spain■ AKADEMIA EKONOMICZNA W POZNANIU, Poland■ TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT EINDHOVEN, Netherlands■ UNIVERSITÄT STUTTGART, Germany■ TELEKOMUNIKACJA POLSKA S.A., Poland■ CEFRIEL - Società consortile a Responsabilità Limitata, Italy

Cos

t pe

r P

roce

ss E

xecu

tion

Delay of Process Setup

Cost o

f Pro

cess

Set

upLack of Evolutionary

Granularity

Lack of Agility

Lack of Efficiency

The Need and the European Dimension

Companies are subject to competition in at least three dimensions

The Critical IT / Process Divide

Business Experts’ Perspective: Processes

IT Implementation Perspective

Process Implementation

Querying the Process Space Manual Labor

What Are My Services?

A1 A2 A3 A4

Here is my business process! I think this solves my business

problem nicely…

Nice try, but it won’t run… You need to specify the services

that perform each step!

What are my services?

A1 A2 A3 A4

I don’t understand about these technical details! This is my view

on the process…

o.k. no problem, I will help you…

pT1 pT2 pT3

What are my services?

This is cumbersome! Why do I always need IT staff to solve

my business problems? It takes too long to get these folks,

they use different terminology than I do…

I am happy to describe what the activities do in my terms. Can the

system be smart enough and find the right services itself???

Matching Activities and Port Types Based on Semantics

Semantic Web Services

A1 A2 A3 A4

pT1 pT2 pT3

Ô1 Ô2 Ô3

O1 O2 O3 O4

Deriving Services From Semantics

■ Activities are annotated with semantics►Anticipated to be done at modeling time►May even be done at deployment or runtime

■ Port types are annotated with semantics►“Semantic Web Services”►Hard problem: Where do the annotations come from?

► Aspect of one WP in Super

■ Selection of appropriate port types done based on matchmaking►…at modeling time or runtime

Supporting Business Users Better

Why do I have to draw everything?

Why do I have to use “expressions” and that stuff at

all?Why isn’t my description

sufficient?

O

O’

M

The amount of the order must at least

be 100€

A

B

C

Business RepresentationBusiness Representation

assign send

xM: …

IT RepresentationIT Representation

Matching Model Representations & Semantics

Here is my business process!

Wow! This is perfect – nothing left to do for me!

Translating Process Model Representations

■ Model of a process most often has different representations at business level and at IT level

■ Assume both, the business representation as well as the IT representation have semantic annotations

■ Semantic descriptions support (semi-) automatic matching of both representations►If semantics matches, representations are assumed to be the

same

…

…

…

This May Not Always Work Out

O

Can we match fragments of a process model?

…

…

…

xM: …

Mapping Fragments

O

M

Translating Process Model Fragments

■ Might happen that a process model has no existing matching representation in the IT space

■ But some fragments of the complete process model might have matching existing representations in the IT space

■ Using fragments in composing or partial translation of process models is very helpful► But fragments must be stitched together

Using Fragments

M1

M2

M

Annotating Process Models & Fragments

This semantic stuff is really helpful!

I agree that it’s worthwhile to annotate IT artifacts…

But do I have to annotate each fragment?

xM: …

O1 O2 O3

O

Deriving Semantics of Process Models & Fragments

O’

Deriving Semantics of Process Models

■ Assume that services (or port types) are annotated with semantics►Which is not the case today!

► But see next...

■ Semantic annotations of (fragments of) process models may be derived from the semantic annotations of the composed services as well as the (causal,… relations expressed via) process model itself

Monitoring & Analyzing Process Models

I need to find out the state of my processes.

But I don’t know the names of the processes, the names of the steps in the processes etc. that the tools

require…. Also, it’s difficult for me to

understand the visualizations of the tools to find the information I

need…

I want to use my terminology to get the results I need…

The Overall Environment to Be Build

Process Modeling

Function/Service

Repository

Process Repository

SWSRepository

Deriv

ing o

r Add

Sem

an

tic A

nnota

tions

sBPMLanguag

e

sBPMRepository

Process Execution

Execution History

Instance Data

Mining

Monitoring

Semantic Query Processor

A1

A2

A3

A5

A4 !

Semantic Matching

SemanticMatching

European Integrated Project

Thank you for your attention!

Frank Leymann, University of Stuttgart

Martin Hepp, University of Innsbruck