BPM Conference Tutorials - Semantic Business Process Management

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24 September 2007, 1:15pm - 5:00pm

During the tutorial it will be explained and demonstrated how Business Process Management (BPM) and Semantic Web Services (SWS) may be combined together in order to eliminate the deficiencies that current BPM technology faces. The tutorial will present the state of the art in the both mentioned areas (the following topics will be mentioned: business process management and process execution, the SOA concept in BPM, the SWS approach and frameworks, etc.), motivate the need for explicit use of semantics to overcome the current challenges in BPM, and present a consolidated technical framework that integrates SWS and BPM technology. Therefore, the first part of the tutorial will cover the foundations and theoretical aspects, while the second part will be dedicated to a comprehensive hands-on session wherein the attendees will actively model Business Processes and Semantic Web Services will respective software tools. Therewith attendees will gain a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in semantically enriched BPM technology, which is one of the central trends in the current BPM research and development.

The tutorial will be held by BPM and SWS experts that actively work in integration of both technologies in the EU-funded SUPER project.

More information can be found at SUPER tutorials website.

Outline

Part 1: Theory (Lecture Style)

1. Business Process Management
   Motivation for Semantic Business Process Management (sBPM):

• SOA Architectures for BPM
• Current challenges and trends

2. Semantic Web Services
   An overview of the state of the art in the Semantic Web Services (SWS) field. In particular the WSMO framework that serves as the basis for the integration of SWS into BPM technology will be presented. This section covers:

• Semantic Web Services approach
• SWS Frameworks, in particular the Web Service Modelling Ontology (WSMO)
• Semantic techniques for discovery, composition, execution and mediation

3. Integration - SWS for BPM
   This part will present the integration approach for BPM and SWS that is developed in the SUPER project. In particular, this covers:

• Process modelling with semantics (ontologies and formal process languages)
• Goal-based process modelling and execution for flexible & dynamic BPM
• The SUPER architecture for semantically enabled BPM
• Mediation for BPM: data and process level

Part 2: Demonstration & Practical Hands-On

4. Software Demonstration
   This part will introduce and demonstrate the software that will be used for the hands-on session. This consists of the following software developed in the SUPER project:

• Semantic Business Process Modelling Tool
• Semantic Business Process Execution Environment
• SWS execution environments: IRS and WSMX

The final part of this presentation will be a practical hands-on session. Attendees will actively model and execute semantically described business processes and Web services with the introduced software. The hands-on session will be conducted in groups of attendees (2-4) with guidance from the presenters. We will provide the software for download on the tutorial website (see above), along with the detailed installation instructions. Although usually enough attendees have the software installed on their personal laptops, we will bring a sufficient number of computers with the installed software for running the hands-on session

Presenters:

• KMI: John Domingue
• Poznan University of Economics: Agata Filipowska, Monika Kaczmarek
• IAAS, University of Stuttgart: Jörg Nitzsche
• Ontotext: Marin Dmitrov

Slide Set Developers:

• KMI: John Domingue, Carlos Pedrinaci, Barry Norton
• Poznan University of Economics: Agata Filipowska, Adam Walczak, Piotr Stolarski
• IAAS, University of Stuttgart: Jörg Nitzsche, Tammo van Lessen, Zhilei Ma, Frank Leymann, Branimir Wetzstein
• IDS Scheer: Sebastian Stein
• DERI Austria: Michael Stollberg, Dumitru Roman
• DERI Ireland: Maciej Zaremba