Semantics for Process Management: Strategic Objectives, Concept, and Results

1. IST Project Number : FP6-026850 Funded by the European Commission, IST, Unit E2 Knowledge Management and Content Creation 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

2. European Integrated Project The Logo

3. 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

4. The Need and the European Dimension Companies are subject to competition in at least three dimensions Lack of Efficiency Lack of EvolutionaryGranularity Cost per Process Execution Cost of Process Setup Lack of Agility Delay of Process Setup

5. The Critical IT / Process Divide Business Experts’ Perspective: Processes Process Implementation Querying the Process Space Manual Labor IT Implementation Perspective

6. A1 A2 A3 A4 What Are My Services? 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!

7. A1 A2 A3 A4 pT3 pT1 pT2 What are my services? I don’t understand about these technical details! This is my view on the process… o.k. no problem, I will help you…

8. 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???

9. O1 O2 O3 O4 pT3 pT1 pT2 Ô1 Ô2 Ô3 Matching Activities and Port Types Based on Semantics A1 A2 A3 A4 Semantic Web Services

10. 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

11. 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?

12. M IT Representation O’   xM: …   assign send Wow! This is perfect – nothing left to do for me! Matching Model Representations & Semantics Here is my business process! Business Representation O The amount of the order must at least be 100€ B A C

13. 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 havesemanticannotations • Semantic descriptions support (semi-) automatic matching of both representations • If semantics matches, representations are assumed to be the same

14. O This May Not Always Work Out  … … …  Can we match fragments of a process model?

15. M  xM: … Mapping Fragments … O … …

16. 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

17. M1 M M2 Using Fragments

18. 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?

19. O’ O Deriving Semantics of Process Models & Fragments O1 O2 O3  xM: …

20. 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

21. 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…

22. sBPMLanguage Semantic Matching Process Execution Instance Data Execution History sBPMRepository Deriving or Add Semantic Annotations SWSRepository Semantic Query Processor A2 A1 A5 ! A3 A4 Monitoring Semantic Matching Mining The Overall Environment to Be Build Process Modeling Process Repository Function/ Service Repository

23. Thank you for your attention! Frank Leymann, University of Stuttgart Martin Hepp, University of Innsbruck