Authors:
Hodjat Soleimani Malekan
and
Hamideh Afsarmanesh
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Keyword(s):
Business Processes, Collaborative Network, Business Process Modeling Languages, Virtual Organizations (VO), VO Breeding Environments, Service-Oriented Architecture.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Artificial Intelligence
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Collaboration and e-Services
;
Complex Systems Modeling and Simulation
;
Data Engineering
;
e-Business
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Health Information Systems
;
Integration/Interoperability
;
Interoperability
;
Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Ontologies and the Semantic Web
;
Sensor Networks
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Software Agents and Internet Computing
;
Software and Architectures
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
Formalizing the definition of Business Processes (BPs) performed within each enterprise is fundamental for effective deployment of their competencies and capabilities within Collaborative Networks (CN). In our approach, every enterprise in the CN is represented by its set of BPs, so that other enterprises can see and potentially share them when developing integrated BPs. Adoption of a suitable BP modeling language (BPML) is therefore critical for this purpose, while challenging due to the variety of existing tools and standards each with different levels of expressiveness and ambiguities. So far, surveys published on BP modeling approaches have compared several features of the main BP languages and standards. However, these surveys mostly focus on specific standards and tools and not on different categories of BPMLs. Moreover, there are no surveys addressing the need to fulfil CN’s requirements. Therefore, aiming to select the most suitable BPML for the purpose of modelling and repre
senting BPs in CNs, while overviewing the defined BPML categories, the paper introduces a new categorization of the main BPMLs. Furthermore, focusing on enterprise collaboration requirements, a specific set of criteria is introduced for comparing these categories. Finally, different categories of BPMLs are compared, when addressing their suitability to support CNs.
(More)