Skip to main content

Exploiting Semantic Activity Labels to Facilitate Consistent Specialization of Abstract Process Activities

  • Conference paper
SOFSEM 2015: Theory and Practice of Computer Science (SOFSEM 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8939))

  • 1271 Accesses

Abstract

Designing business processes from scratch is an intricate and challenging task for process modellers. For this reason, the reuse of process patterns has become an integral part of process modelling in order to deal with recurring design issues in a given domain when modelling new business processes and variants thereof. The specialization of abstract process activities remains a key issue in process pattern reuse. Depending on the intended purpose of process pattern reuse, the specialization of abstract process activities typically ranges from the substitution of abstract process activities with sub-processes to the substitution of activity labels with specialized labels. The specialization of abstract process activities through label specialization has been hardly investigated so far in the business process community. The approach presented in this paper achieves consistent specialization of abstract process activities by ensuring consistent specialization of activity labels through exploitation of semantic activity labels as introduced in previous work. Semantic activity labels encode the linguistic meaning of process activities and thereby facilitate the establishment of consistency criteria based on the implicit semantics captured by activity labels.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. van der Aalst, W.M.P., Basten, T.: Inheritance of workflows: an approach to tackling problems related to change. Theor. Comput. Sci. 270(1-2), 125–203 (2002)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Becker, J., Delfmann, P., Knackstedt, R.: Adaptive reference modeling: Integrating configurative and generic adaptation techniques for information models. In: Becker, J., Delfmann, P. (eds.) Reference Modeling, pp. 27–58. Physica-Verlag HD (2007), http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-1966-3_2

  3. Bögl, A., Karlinger, M., Schrefl, M., Pomberger, G.: EPCs annotated with lexical and semantic labels to bridge the gap between human understandability and machine interpretability. In: Smolnik, S., F.T, Thomas, O. (eds.) Semantic Technologies for Business and Information Systems Engineering, pp. 214–241. IGI Global (2012), NOTE: The published version of this book chapter unfortunately contains numerous typesetting errors caused by the publisher. An error-free version is available at the authors’ website http://www.dke.jku.at/research/publications

  4. Dijkman, R., Dumas, M., van Dongen, B., Käärik, R., Mendling, J.: Similarity of business process models: Metrics and evaluation. Inf. Syst. 36(2), 498–516 (2011), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2010.09.006

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Ehrig, M., Koschmider, A., Oberweis, A.: Measuring similarity between semantic business process models. In: Roddick, J.F., Hinze, A. (eds.) Proceedings of the Fourth Asia-Pacific Conference on Conceptual Modelling (APCCM 2007). CRPIT, vol. 67, pp. 71–80 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Greco, G., Guzzo, A., Pontieri, L., Saccá, D.: An ontology-driven process modeling framework. In: Galindo, F., Takizawa, M., Traunmüller, R. (eds.) DEXA 2004. LNCS, vol. 3180, pp. 13–23. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Keller, G., Nüttgens, M., Scheer, A.W.: Semantische Prozeßmodellierung auf der Grundlage Ereignisgesteuerter Prozeßketten (EPK). Tech. Rep. 89, Universität des Saarlandes, Germany, Saarbrücken, Germany (January 1992)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Koschmider, A., Blanchard, E.: User assistance for business process model decomposition. In: First IEEE International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science, pp. 445–454 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Lausen, G.: Modeling and analysis of the behavior of information systems. IEEE Trans. Software Eng. 14(11), 1610–1620 (1988)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. Leopold, H., Smirnov, S., Mendling, J.: On labeling quality in business process models. In: Proceedings of the 8th GI-Workshop Geschftsprozessmanagement mit Ereignisgesteuerten Prozessketten (EPK), Berlin, Germany (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Lyons, J.: Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Mendling, J., Reijers, H.A., Cardoso, J.: What makes process models understandable? In: Alonso, G., Dadam, P., Rosemann, M. (eds.) BPM 2007. LNCS, vol. 4714, pp. 48–63. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Mendling, J., Reijers, H.A., Recker, J.: Activity labeling in process modeling: Empirical insights and recommendations. Inf. Syst. 35(4), 467–482 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. OMG: Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), Version 2.0, OMG Document Number: formal/2011-01-03, http://www.omg.org/spec/bpmn/2.0/ (last visited September 29, 2014)

  15. Reinhartz-Berger, I., Soffer, P., Sturm, A.: Extending the adaptability of reference models. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A 40(5), 1045–1056 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Schrefl, M.: Behavior modelling by stepwise refining behavior diagrams. In: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Entity-Relationship Approach (ER 1990), pp. 113–128 (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Schrefl, M., Stumptner, M.: Behavior-consistent specialization of object life cycles. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. 11(1), 92–148 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Smirnov, S., Reijers, H.A., Weske, M.: From fine-grained to abstract process models: A semantic approach. Inf. Syst. 37(8), 784–797 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Weidlich, M., Barros, A., Mendling, J., Weske, M.: Vertical alignment of process models – how can we get there? In: Halpin, T., Krogstie, J., Nurcan, S., Proper, E., Schmidt, R., Soffer, P., Ukor, R. (eds.) Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling. LNBIP, vol. 29, pp. 71–84. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. Weidlich, M., Dijkman, R., Mendling, J.: The iCoP framework: Identification of correspondences between process models. In: Pernici, B. (ed.) CAiSE 2010. LNCS, vol. 6051, pp. 483–498. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Weidlich, M., Mendling, J., Weske, M.: A foundational approach for managing process variability. In: Mouratidis, H., Rolland, C. (eds.) CAiSE 2011. LNCS, vol. 6741, pp. 267–282. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  22. Weidlich, M., Weske, M.: Structural and behavioural commonalities of process variants. In: Gierds, C., Sürmeli, J. (eds.) ZEUS 2010. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 563, pp. 41–48. CEUR-WS.org (2010)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Bögl, A., Karlinger, M., Schütz, C., Schrefl, M., Pomberger, G. (2015). Exploiting Semantic Activity Labels to Facilitate Consistent Specialization of Abstract Process Activities. In: Italiano, G.F., Margaria-Steffen, T., Pokorný, J., Quisquater, JJ., Wattenhofer, R. (eds) SOFSEM 2015: Theory and Practice of Computer Science. SOFSEM 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8939. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46078-8_39

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46078-8_39

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-46077-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-46078-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics