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

3.2. SEMANTIC INTEROPERABILITY AND PROCESS ONTOLOGIES 41
• Bundles. A group of related specializations. In general, they are grouped based
on questions of an activity: how? what? who? when? where? and why? For most
activities in the handbook, some subset of these questions provides a systematic
and logical way of grouping the different specializations that appear.
• Uses. A list of activities where the given activity is used as a part.
• Generalizations. The set of activities are type processes of the given activity.
Other kinds of entries are also used in the process handbook, such as Dependencies
(flow, sharing and fit), Resources (inputs, outputs, actors and locations), and Exceptions
(exception types and ways of exception detection, anticipation, avoidance and
solution).
For the process perspectives, the operational/functional perspective of a process
is elaborated through the entries of an activity. Parts and Uses provide a structural
view of activities. Resources and Bundles can specify resources and organizational
perspectives. The control perspective is represented through Dependencies. The data
transaction perspective is not specified explicitly through those entries.
The MIT process handbook contains generic models of typical business activities
(e.g. buying, making, and selling) and specific case examples of business practices.
They are classified and represented through the entries. In such a way, process knowledge
in the repository looks like business process taxonomy and patterns. The semantics
of entries are not formally defined for the repository but they can be represented in
PIF [85] to share the process descriptions.
3.2.3 TOVE (Toronto Virtual Enterprise) ontologies
TOVE ontologies are stated as a common sense enterprise model covering a set of integrated
ontologies for the modeling of both commercial and public enterprises. The
TOVE consists of a set of generic core ontologies, including an activity ontology that
spans activity, state, time and causality, a generic resource ontology describing the
properties of the enterprise resources such as machines, electricity or raw materials,
capital, human skill and information, an organization ontology spanning structure,
roles, and communication, and a product ontology which includes features, parameters,
assemblies, versions, and revisions. It also includes a set of extensions to these
generic ontologies to cover concepts such as cost and quality. However, the primary
component of the ontology is the terminology for classes of processes and relations for
processes and resources, along with definitions of the classes and relations [44]. The
KIF (Knowledge Interchange Format) [29] is the language providing the logical lexicon
for the TOVE ontologies. The non-logical part of the lexicon consists of expressions
(constants, functions, relations) that refer to concepts in some domain.
At the heart of the TOVE enterprise model lies the representation of an activity
and its corresponding enabling and caused states. Activities and states specify transformations
by fluent and actions. Axioms of temporal projection represent how the
actions change the status of a state. A set of constants are defined for status (of state
and of activities), and a set of actions are defined by functions with parameters of
the state and the associated activity [101]. Evidently, the data transaction perspective
can be supported by activity ontology. The states related to classes of resources