Supporting ontology-based semantic annotation of business processes with automated suggestions

Abstract

Business Process annotation with semantic tags taken from an ontology is becoming a crucial activity for business designers. In fact, semantic annotations help business process comprehension, documentation, analysis and evolution. However, building a domain ontology and annotating a process with semantic concepts is a difficult task. In this work, we propose an automated technique to support the business designer both in domain ontology creation/extension and in the semantic annotation of process models expressed in BPMN. We use natural language processing of the labels appearing in the process elements to construct a domain ontology skeleton or to extend an existing ontology, if available. Semantic annotations are automatically suggested to the business designer, based on a measure of similarity between ontology concepts and the labels of the process elements to be annotated. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.