A formalisation of BPMN in Description Logics
This work addresses the need for a formal semantic foundation in business process modeling for practitioners and researchers, but it is incremental as it applies an existing method (Description Logics) to a specific domain (BPMN).
The authors tackled the problem of providing a clear semantic formalization for the structural components of the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) by developing an ontology in Description Logics based on the BPMN Version 1.1 specifications, resulting in a textual description that formalizes the complete set of BPMN Element Attributes and Types.
In this paper we present a textual description, in terms of Description Logics, of the BPMN Ontology, which provides a clear semantic formalisation of the structural components of the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN), based on the latest stable BPMN specifications from OMG [BPMN Version 1.1 -- January 2008]. The development of the ontology was guided by the description of the complete set of BPMN Element Attributes and Types contained in Annex B of the BPMN specifications.