Ontology-based behavioural reasoning for business processes

Abstract

One notable distinction between the W3C approach to web services, and the ontology-based approach called semantic web services, is the inclusion of behavioural models in the relevant standards. Indeed the de facto standard for the orchestration of plain web services, BPEL - increasingly applied also to choreography - was developed and standardised independently. At the same time the formal behavioural semantics given to semantic web services are expressed extra-ontologically and not amenable to the machine-based reasoning that the approach is intended to provide. With the advent of semantic business process management, introduced by the SUPER project, the same ontology-based approach is being applied to business process models but the same criticism applies, thus far, to behavioural models. This paper presents work on the Behavioural Reasoning Ontology and the ontology-based translation from SUPER's Business Process Modelling Ontology, which aims to remedy this situation. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.