Prototype of an Ontology-Based Approach for Collaborative Process Specification

A collaborative network is an open and agile system that evolves and adapts itself regularly along its life cycle. A possible way toward the facilitation of creating networks is the interoperability. This paper presents an ontology-based approach for dealing with the business level of the MDE (model-driven engineering) approach for the interoperability. We use ontologies and deduction rules to automate the specification of BPMN (business process modeling notation) collaborative processes for business networks. For such purpose, we propose to work at the higher abstraction level than the CIM for capturing knowledge on collaboration from business partners. We use the existing knowledge about business processes from the MIT Process Handbook for moving down to the CIM. A prototype has been developed in order to support this approach. The prototype is a kind of a computer-aided design tool that uses a knowledge base.