Process mining has become a cornerstone of process analysis and improvement over the last few years. With the widespread adoption of process mining tools and libraries, the limitations of traditional process mining to deal with event data with multiple case identifiers, i.e., object-centric event data, have become apparent. As a response, the subfield of object-centric process mining has formed, including a file format standardization attempt in the form of OCEL 1.0, unifying the insights of previous developments in capturing object-centric event data. However, discussions among researchers and practitioners have shown that the proposed OCEL 1.0 standard does not go far enough. OCEL 2.0 has been proposed as an advanced refinement, including normative and explicit object-to-object relationships, qualifiers for objectto-object and event-to-object relationships, and evolving object attribute values. This demonstration presents the OCEL 2.0 website available under the URLhttps://www.ocel-standard.orgas a one-stop shop for the detailed specification, example event logs, and broad tool support to facilitate the adoption of the format.
CEUR ceur-ws.org
Process mining has permeated many organizations over the last few years. A wide range of
dedicated tools and functionalities within of-the-shelf software systems can perform process
analysis. Although process mining can yield powerful insights, there are currently some limiting
factors. Often, only case-based analysis is ofered. Therefore, for each new perspective on a
process or related processes, new extractions and transformations from the information systems
have to be performed. Traditional event logs stored in the XES standard format can only store
and provide case-based event data. Object-centric process mining addresses this limitation1,[
The website serves as an exhaustive resource for both researchers and practitioners. It provides access to the latest specification along with a scientific formalization of the standard, and a number of event logs. Additionally, it ofers an array of libraries and examples to get started.
Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the website and the OCEL 2.0 metamodel. The greatest strength of the format is that various relationships and their qualifiers are now directly incorporated. Events now have a qualified relationship to objects, which means that the nature of the relationship is explicitly annotated. Similarly, object-to-object relationships can be explicitly stored and supplemented with a qualifier. Both reinforce the benefit of flexibility by storing various intertwined processes without having to refer back to source data. In addition, changes to object attribute values can now be tracked. We provide three file storage formats. TheXML variant is human-readable and structured according to industry XML best practices. ThJeSON variant features a lightweight structure that can be natively used in web environments. TheSQLite variant allows for eficient SQL querying, eliminating the necessity to parse the entire event log.
The website initially provides four new event logs that target and demonstrate new features of OCEL 2.0, available on the research data platform Zenodo.
The Logistics [
The Order Management [
The Procure-to-Pay [7] log is a simulated event log that has been replicated with domain knowledge of a real SAP system. It handles scenarios such as lengthy approvals and duplicate payments. Resource availability is realistically mapped based on business hours, and the capacity of human resources.
The Angular GitHub Commits [8] is a real-world event log containing information on the commits in the GitHub repository of the Angular project. Additionally, we converted some event logs that have already been made available for OCEL 1.0.
Several tools and libraries have been developed to accommodate the OCEL 2.0 format: • OC [9]: A standalone tool for object-centric process discovery, variant analysis, and ifltering. OC supports object-centric variants and filters based on frequency of behavior across object types. • Object-Centric Process Mining (OCPM) [10]: A JavaScript web application that provides capabilities such as process discovery and visualization of object-centric models. • Ocelot.pm: A web-based event log inspector for OCEL 2.0 files. It visualizes event and object types as models and shows events and objects in searchable data tables. • Oracle EBS Connector: A transformer connecting to Oracle databases, targeting tables related to the Purchase-to-Pay process, and facilitating OCEL 2.0 export. • Celonis OCDM Connector: A tool designed for the Celonis platform, enabling import/export of object-centric event logs in OCEL 2.0 to the CelonisObject-Centric Data Model. • ocpa library [11]: Focuses on processing object-centric event logs, process discovery, model evaluation, performance analysis, and predictive monitoring. • pm4js library: For JavaScript environments, it supports tasks like log flattening, statistics generation, process discovery, and more. • pm4py library [12]: A prominent Python library in process mining that has incorporated
OCEL 2.0 support, compatible with the XML, JSON, and relational storage formats.
Using object-centric process mining, analysts can get a holistic overview of relationships between diferent processes and their objects. The new OCEL 2.0 specification overcomes the limitations of the OCEL 1.0 format by providing qualifiers, object-to-object relationships, and changes to object attribute values. Our website builds a comprehensive one-stop shop with all the content necessary to get started implementing connectors and custom process mining analyses. In the future, we plan to extend the website with further content, such as additional event logs and tools/libraries. We are open to external contributions, particularly those that include real-life event logs.
Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy - EXC-2023 Internet of Production - 390621612. We also thank the Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Stiftung for supporting our research. [7] G. Park, L. Tacke Genannt Unterberg, Procure-to-Payment (P2P) Object-Centric event log in OCEL 2.0 Standard, 2023. doi1:0.5281/zenodo.8412919. [8] M. Pegoraro, Angular GitHub Commits Object-Centric Event Log, 2023. do1i:0.5281/ zenodo.8430331. [9] J. N. Adams, W. M. P. van der Aalst, OC(π): Object-centric Process Insights, in: L. Bernardinello, L. Petrucci (Eds.), Application and Theory of Petri Nets and Concurrency - 43rd International Conference, PETRI NETS 2022, Bergen, Norway, June 19-24, 2022, Proceedings, volume 13288 ofLecture notes in computer science, Springer, 2022, pp. 139–150. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-06653-5_8. [10] A. Berti, W. M. P. van der Aalst, OC-PM: analyzing object-centric event logs and process models, Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transf. 25 (2023) 1–17. doi:10.1007/ s10009-022-00668-w. [11] J. N. Adams, G. Park, W. M. P. van der Aalst, ocpa: A Python library for object-centric process analysis, Softw. Impacts 14 (2022) 100438. doi: 10.1016/j.simpa.2022.100438. [12] A. Berti, S. van Zelst, D. Schuster, PM4Py: A process mining library for Python, Software Impacts 17 (2023) 100556. doi:10.1016/j.simpa.2023.100556.