oXPDL : a Process Model Exchange Ontology

This paper presents oXPDL, a process interchange ontology based on the standardised XML Process Definition Language (XPDL). XPDL was introduced to exchange process models between today’s information systems which still mostly use proprietary workflow models. However, XPDL lacks the representational strength to semantically define extensions which vendors can add to the schema of XPDL. It is shallow on the modelling of the informational and organisational aspect and it lacks the ability to interlink to existing standardised knowledge bases. oXPDL explicitly models the complete semantics of a process model defined according to XPDL in a Web ontology language. It has a strong focus on the reuse and integration of other existing standard ontologies such as SUMO, eClassOWL, RosettaNet and PSL. Further, a tool is presented to automatically translate an XML instance according to the XPDL schema to an instance according to oXPDL. Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), National University of Ireland, Galway, IDA Business Park, Lower Dangan, Galway, Ireland. E-mail: {armin.haller, mateusz.marmolowski, walid.gaaloul}@deri.org. AI department, VU Amsterdam, de Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: eoren@few.vu.nl Acknowledgements: This material is based upon works supported by the Science Foundation Ireland under Grant No. SFI/02/CE1/I131 and No. SFI/04/BR/CS0694. Copyright c © 2007 by the authors DERI TR 2007-12-12 I

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