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Integration of business process modeling and Web services: a survey

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Abstract

A significant challenge in business process automation involves bridging the gap between business process representations and Web service technologies that implement business activities. We are interested in business process representations such as Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and Event-Driven Process Chains (EPCs). Web service technologies include protocols such as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), architectures such as REpresentational State Transfer (RESTful), or semantic description languages and formalisms such as Web Ontology Language for Services (OWL-S) and Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO). This paper reviews previous work on the integration of business process representations and Web service technologies. It provides a perspective on the field by summarizing, organizing, and classifying the proposed approaches. Consequently, this study has identified opportunities for future research in the field, including the need for a generic transformation approach among arbitrary models, the need to represent mappings in a formalized way, and the necessity of a common execution framework.

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Abbreviations

AML:

ARIS markup Language

ATL:

Atlas Transformation Language

BDD:

Binary Decision Diagram

BPD:

Business Process Diagrams

BPEL:

Business Process Execution Language

BPEL4WS:

BPEL for Web services

BPM:

Business Process Management

BPML:

Business Process Modeling Language

BPMN:

Business Process Modeling Notation

BPMO:

Business Process Modeling Ontology

BPMsO:

The Business Process Modeling sub-Ontology

BPEL2BPMO:

BPEL to BPMO transformation

BPMO2sBPEL:

BPMO to sBPEL transformation

BWW:

Bunge-Wand-Weber

CSP:

Communicating Sequential Processes

DAML-S:

DARPA Agent Markup Language for Services

ebBPSS:

ebXML Business Process Specification Schema

EPC:

Event-Driven Process Chains

EPML:

EPC Markup language

EXPRESS:

EXPressing REstful semantic services

FBPML:

Fundamental Business Process Modeling Language

FBPML PL:

FBPML Process Language

FDR:

Failures-Divergences Refinement

GPO:

General Process Ontology

hRESTS:

HTML for RESTful Services

IDEF3:

Integration Definition 3

ISPL:

Interpreted Systems Programming Language

ITIL:

Information Technology Infrastructure Library

KIBS:

Knowledge-intensive business services

MCMAS:

Model Checker for Multi-Agent Systems

OASIS:

Organization for Advancement of Structured Information Standards

OMG:

Object Management Group

Onto-ITIL:

ITIL Ontology

OWL:

Web Ontology Language

OWL-S:

OWL for services

oXPDL:

Ontology for XPDL

POWDER:

Protocol for Web Description Resources

POWDER-S:

Semantic POWDER

PSL:

Process Specification Language

REST:

Representational State Transfer

RESTful:

Conforming to REST constraints

RIDDL:

RESTful Interface Definition and Declaration Language

SA-REST:

Semantic Annotations for SA-REST

SAWSDL:

Semantic Annotations for WSDL

sBPEL:

Semantic BPEL

SESE:

Single-entry Single-exit

SiTra:

Simple Transformer

SMV:

Symbolic Model Verifier

SOAP:

Simple Object Access Protocol

SOG:

Symbolic Observation Graph

SOMsO:

Services Oriented Modeling sub-Ontology

SQWRL:

Semantic Query-Enhanced Web Rule Language

SWRL:

Semantic Web Rule Language

SWSF:

Semantic Web Services Framework

UDDI:

Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration

WADL:

Web Application Description Language

WFCP:

Workflow Control Patterns

WS-BPEL:

Web Services BPEL

WS-CDL:

Web Services Choreography Description Language

WSDL:

Web Service Description Language

WSDL-S:

Web Service Semantics (WSDL Semantics)

WSML:

Web Service Modeling Language

WSMO:

Web Service Modeling Ontology

XML:

Extensible markup language

XPDL:

XML Process Definition Language

XSLT:

eXtendable Stylesheet Language Transformation

YAWL:

Yet Another Workflow Language

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Grolinger, K., Capretz, M.A.M., Cunha, A. et al. Integration of business process modeling and Web services: a survey. SOCA 8, 105–128 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11761-013-0138-2

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