Semantic Annotation for Process Models: - Department of Computer ...

84 CHAPTER 5. GOAL ANNOTATION
process models since there is no need for representations of process models but only for
process capability specifications.
To facilitate the goal-driven discovery, capability of processes should be explicated
in process models. However, most process modeling languages do not supply such a
mechanism. Even if they are goal-supported modeling, they typically differ in various
languages. Moreover, the representations of capability might also differ by terminology
and conceptualization, which are common problems in any heterogeneous models. By
extending our semantic annotation framework, a goal ontology is adopted to annotate
process models for specifications of the process capability. With a goal ontology, the
user can specify his/her goal request. The goal-driven discovery process is to match goal
requests with goal annotation of process models through the goal ontology definitions.
In goal annotation, a goal ontology provides definitions of a set of business objectives
or goals. In requirements engineering, business objectives or goals can be described in
natural language or specified in goal models. Goal models are usually made for requirements
elicitation and then used to derive process models. Goal modeling methods
in requirements engineering provide references for building a goal ontology. When implementing
a goal annotation, we need to establish the relationships between process
models and the goal ontology. Goal annotation becomes one element of the semantic
annotation framework which complements the approach from a pragmatic perspective.
5.2 Goal Ontology for Semantic Annotation
In this work, business goals are formalized in a goal ontology, which provides semantic
representations of goals in a consensual way for different organizations. The focus in
this section is goal ontology modeling. Firstly, we start from the discussion about the
principles of goal ontology modeling in our approach. Based on the principles, we then
define our goal ontology model in OWL.
5.2.1 Goal ontology design principles
Since we focus on process models, the first design principle is that the goals to be linked
to process models should be process achievable. Thus, the research will not include the
goals related to technical factors such as the usage of computing resources or financial
aims like reaching a certain amount of gross profit. Furthermore, the process knowledge
in our research is at model level not at instance level. Accordingly, goals defined for a
certain domain are relatively abstract but not very concrete for an application. We are
concerned with for example, the accomplishment of customers ordering of a cell phone
but do not interested in the instance goal like satisfying Joan’s ordering of SAMSUNG
E568. In order to organize goals at a rational abstraction level, a goal ontology is
domain specific and organized into categories.
As the second design principle, the corresponding relationships between a goal ontology
and a process model should be easily built to facilitate the goal annotation.
Many goal modeling languages have modeling constructs which are relevant to process
modeling, so that those goal modeling approaches from the literature could be referred
to model goal ontology concerning this principle. Distinct from those goal modeling
languages, a goal ontology is used to normalize the semantic representation of agents’