A Semantic Web Services-based Infrastructure for Context-Adaptive Process Support

Current technologies aimed at supporting processes - whether it is a business or learning process - primarily follow a metadata- and data-centric paradigm. Whereas process metadata is usually based on a specific standard specification - such as the business process modeling notation (BPMN) or the IMS learning design standard - the allocation of resources is done manually at design- time, and the used data is often specific to one process context only. These facts limit the reusability of process models across different standards and contexts. To overcome these issues, we introduce an innovative semantic Web service-based framework aimed at changing the current paradigm to a context-adaptive service-oriented approach. Following the idea of layered semantic abstractions, our approach supports the development of abstract semantic process model-reusable across different contexts and standards - that enables a dynamic adaptation to specific actor needs and objectives. To illustrate the application of our framework and establish its feasibility, we describe a prototypical application in the e-learning domain.