=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1629/paper5
|storemode=property
|title=Cognitive Process Designer – An Open-Source Tool to Capture Processes according to the Linked Data Principles
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1629/paper5.pdf
|volume=Vol-1629
|authors=Tobias Weller,Maria Maleshkova
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/esws/WellerM16
}}
==Cognitive Process Designer – An Open-Source Tool to Capture Processes according to the Linked Data Principles==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1629/paper5.pdf
Cognitive Process Designer - An Open-Source
Tool to Capture Processes according to the
Linked Data Principles
Demo Paper
Tobias Weller and Maria Maleshkova
Institute for Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods, Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology (KIT),
Englerstr. 11, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
{tobias.weller,maria.maleshkova}@kit.edu
http://www.aifb.kit.edu
Abstract. Processes need to be captured in a structured way in order to
analyze them by using computer-assisted methods. This circumstance be-
comes more important as the process becomes complex. Although there
are standardized formats, they do not capture semantics of input/output
parameters, involved persons or references to external data sources. Ex-
isting solutions provide tools to capture processes locally and specify
new properties to extend the semantics of process languages. However,
a collaborative platform to capture, discuss and share information is
more advantageous, because processes are usually used and maintained
collaboratively. In addition, users cannot define own semantics for their
use-case scenarios and the proposed semantics and processes are not pub-
lished according to the Linked Data principles. To address these problems
we 1) provide an open-source tool to capture BPMN processes graphi-
cally in a Semantic MediaWiki; 2) allow users to define own semantics
and 3) publish the information according to the Linked Data principles.
Keywords: Process Modeling, Semantic MediaWiki, Business Process
Model and Notation, Semantic BPMN, Semantic Annotations
1 Introduction
Process modeling languages are mostly graphical representations, which capture
workflows. However, processes must be available in a structured way in order to
analyze and optimize them. Semantic information like input/output parameters,
involved persons, conditions or references to external data sources can improve
analyzes of processes. Although, there are standardized formats that represents
the graphical representation of process modeling languages and allow to share
them, they do not capture semantic information.
Existing solutions allow to capture semantics partly, however, they do not
publish the information according to the Linked Data principles1 and do not run
1
https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html
2 Tobias Weller and Maria Maleshkova
in a collaborative platform [1]. However, the analysis of process models and its
elements can profit from including semantic information [2, 3].
Processes are usually used and maintained collaboratively. Therefore, a col-
laborative platform, which captures processes and its semantic information, is
preferable. The constantly availability and easy accessibility of the World Wide
Web provides the basis for a collaborative platform, in which multiple persons
can accumulate, share, discuss and edit processes, as well as information about
them.
To this end, we present a graphical editor to capture Business Process Model
and Notation (BPMN) processes and semantic information about them in a
Semantic MediaWiki [4] (SMW)2 , which serves as a collaborative platform. In
particular, our tool allows to 1) create, import and export BPMN processes –
ensuring proposed standard formats for a facilitated communication with other
tools, 2) editing already existing BPMN processes in Semantic MediaWiki –
allowing to add, edit and delete BPMN process, 3) annotating BPMN processes
– enriching BPMN elements with semantic information.
2 Motivation
We want to use Semantic Web Technologies and already existing contributions
to model, store and access information about processes for enabling people to
use the information for analyzing processes.
We used Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) as modeling lan-
guage. The main reason is that BPMN is proposed as a standard by the Object
Management Group (OMG) in 2008. Currently, the latest available version of
BPMN is 2.0.2, published in ISO/IEC 195103 . In addition, BPMN is not re-
stricted to a specific domain.
There are many ontologies for BPMN 2.0 available [5–7] that allow to capture
the semantics in processes and include meta-information. Among others, there
is a BPMN Ontology from the Data & Knowledge Management (DKM) research
unit4 , which has a very detailed formalization of the BPMN 2.0 specifications
in OWL 2 DL [8]. We follow an approach of reusing existing standards and
approaches and therefore, want to allow to reuse such existing ontologies.
Once the information is modeled and structured according to existing ontolo-
gies, the process and the related information is available for different purposes.
The graphical presentation of the process allows people, especially non-technical
people, to understand the workflow of the process.
Besides this, analysts can use the available structure data and retrieve in-
formation from the process. Thereby, especially the semantics allow to retrieve
information, which could not be queried before, and therefore help to analyze
a process in very detail. The information can among others be used to perform
statistical analyses on processes like correlation tests to indicate crucial parts
2
https://www.semantic-mediawiki.org
3
http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=62652
4
https://dkm.fbk.eu
Title Suppressed Due to Excessive Length 3
of the process, train models for predicting the outcome or perform similarity
analysis for compare different processes.
3 Cognitive Process Designer
We use a Semantic MediaWiki to store process models and meta-information
and providing them as Linked Data. For modeling and annotating BPMN pro-
cesses, we developed an extension to SMW, called Cognitive Process Designer5 ,
that allows to model BPMN processes graphically in Semantic MediaWiki. Each
element of the BPMN process (node and edge) has its own wiki page, and there-
fore unique URI, that stores information about the element. SMW publishes the
information according to the Linked Data principles. Therefore, the information
is published by using standard format like RDF, which can be accessed, queried
and interlinked. Figure 1 shows an exemplary process, modeled with Cognitive
Process Designer, and an extraction of the semantically available information.
Cognitive Process Designer provides an interface to Semantic Forms, which
allows to capture and store meta-information about the BPMN process and its
elements by using forms. The graphical user-interface and the provided forms
make it also for non-technical users possible to enter process models and related
information.
Cognitive Process Designer interacts with each modification of the diagram
with the MediaWiki API in order to change the information on the wiki page
of the corresponding element. For the communication with the MediaWiki API,
we use an asynchronous communication so that users do not have to wait for the
response, which makes the tool more user-friendly. Besides creating and loading
Fig. 1. The left figure shows a BPMN process, modeled by using Cognitive Process
Designer. The right figure shows the formal representation of the BPMN process and
all its information stored in the SMW.
existing BPMN processes in Semantic MediaWiki and modifying them, Cogni-
tive Process Designer allows to import BPMN 2.0 XML6 , which is a standardized
format to represent BPMN processes. Moreover, Cognitive Process Designer al-
lows to export BPMN processes in BPMN 2.0 XML and in SVG, which is an
5
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Cognitive_Process_Designer
6
http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/
4 Tobias Weller and Maria Maleshkova
image format. Therefore, Cognitive Process Designer can handle proposed stan-
dard formats in order to share BPMN processes with different modeling tools.
The available information can be queried by using SPARQL. Thereby, struc-
tural information like the presence of deadlocks or loops can be queried, meta-
information related information like the runtime of the process and number of
involved persons, as well as the ratio of description for each task to see how well
a task or process is described.
4 Demonstration Setup
The demonstration of Cognitive Process Designer involves the modeling of a
BPMN process, taken from the domain Internet of Things. During the demon-
stration, we will show how the tool is suitable to 1) capture BPMN processes
2) store semantic information about the BPMN elements 3) handle proposed
standard formats in order to import/export process models and 4) query the
entered information.
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