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

4.4. META-MODEL ANNOTATION 73
Input and Output to represent the operational/function perspective. Decomposable
Activities and their subAcitivities can be applied to specify the structural perspective.
The resource and organizational perspectives can be presented through the specifications
of Artifact and Actor-role respectively. The control perspective of a process is
represented by Precondition, Postcondition of Activities and a set of WorkflowPatterns
and Exception to link Activities. No particular concept is identified to represent the
data transaction perspective but the links between Artifact and Input or Output can be
used to specify changes of data values associated with a certain Artifact.
4.4.2 Mapping rules in Meta-model annotation
GPO is a mediator for semantic reconciliation of process modeling concepts and it
should not be seen as a new process modeling language, but a means to annotate the
process modeling constructs. In a meta-model annotation a process modeling language
is annotated manually by annotators. The procedure of meta-model annotation is in
fact to set mapping rules between the GPO concepts and process modeling language
constructs or meta-model elements. The mapping rules consist of both one-to-one
and one-to-many correspondences between the GPO concepts and modeling language
constructs or meta-model elements. More complicated cases might occur, such as a
correspondence between a GPO concept and a combination of several modeling constructs
or meta-model elements. To define mapping rules for different cases, we categorize
three types of modeling constructs — AtomicConstruct, EnumeratedConstruct
and ComposedConstruct. Each single modeling construct is an AtomicConstruct, an
EnumeratedConstuct is a list of several AtomicConstructs, and a ComposedConstruct
is composed of several AtomicConstructs.
Mapping Rules:
• One-to-one mapping: a GPO concept is referred by an AtomicConstruct (e.g.
GPO:Activity) is mapped to EEML:Task);
• One-to-many mapping: a GPO concept can be referred by several modeling
language constructs respectively which are enumerated in an EnumeratedConstruct
(e.g. GPO:Artifact) can be mapped to EEML:Information Object or
EEML:Material Object);
• One-to-combination mapping: a GPO concept is referred by a combination of
those modeling language constructs in a ComposedConstruct (e.g. GPO:WorkflowPattern
is mapped to a combination of EEML:Flow and EEML:Decision Point).
Different technologies can be employed to represent the mapping rules, such as
XML, RDF/RDFS or OWL. An OWL representation is exemplified below. A namespace
metaAnno is used to encode meta-model annotation in these three mapping cases: