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Even though process orientation/BPM is a widely accepted paradigm
with heavy impact on industry and research the available technology
does not support the business professionals tasks in an appropriate
manner that is in a way allowing processes modeling using concepts
from the business domain. This results in a gap between the business
people expertise and the IT knowledge required. The current trend in
bridging this gap is to utilize technologies developed for the
Semantic Web, for example ontologies, while maintaining reusability
and flexibility of processes. In this chapter the authors present an
overview of existing technologies, supporting the BPM lifecycle, and
focus on potential benefits Semantic Web technologies can bring to
BPM. The authors will show how these technologies help automate the
transition between the inherently separate/detached business
professionals level and the IT level without the burden of
additional knowledge acquisition on behalf of the business
professionals. As background information they briefly discuss
existing process modeling notations like the Business Process
Modeling Notation (BPMN) as well as the execution centric Business
Process Execution Language (BPEL), and their limitations in terms of
proper support for the business professional. The chapter stresses
on the added value Semantic Web technologies yield when leveraged
for the benefit of BPM. For this the authors give examples of
existing BPM techniques that can be improved by using Semantic Web
technologies, as well as novel approaches which became possible only
through the availability of semantic descriptions. They show how
process model configuration can be automated and thus simplified and
how flexibility during process execution is increased. Additionally,
they present innovative techniques like automatic process
composition and auto-completion of process models where suitable
process fragments are automatically discovered to make up the
process model. They also present a reference architecture of a BPM
system that utilizes Semantic Web technologies in an SOA
environment.
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