Ontology-Based Configuration for Service-Based Business Process Model

Abstract

Configurable process models can be used to provide information on business processes for different user groups in an appropriate and efficient manner. It promotes the reuse of proven practices by providing analysts with a generic modeling artifact from which to derive individual process models. Before a configurable business process being configured into a concrete business process model, the variability points of the configurable business process need to be identified. The decision on how to bind these variation points boils down to the users' requirements and needs. Given the specified requirements of the users, the configurable business process can be configured. In the paper, we propose a framework for carrying out automatic service-based business process configuration by using SWRL based business rules. We design and implement a variation point ontology, in which the guidelines of variable points are presented by SWRL rules. We also summarize a set of domain-specific business rules too, thus we can use these domain-specific rules to get the specific rules needed to meet users' requirements. We exploit domain ontology as knowledge base and rules as guideline to configure business process, for the purpose of individual configuration. Then we employ a configuration algorithm to configure a configurable business process depending on the reference result we obtain. The approach is validated by a case study from the domain of the urban logistics distribution.