Business Process Management Workshops

Business Process Management (BPM) remains of high popularity as a paradigm for the evaluation and design of organizational and IT systems as well as an increasingly attractive domain for academic research. There are definite signs of maturity in the operationalization and value generation of process-based management approaches and communities of practice (e.g., BPMG.org), and events like the annual Business Process Management conference contribute to a fast growing body of knowledge on BPM.

The sequence and timing constraints on the activities in business processes are an important aspect of business process compliance. To date, these constraints are most often implicitly transcribed into control-flow-based process models. This implicit representation of constraints, however, complicates the verification, validation and reuse in business process design. In this paper, we investigate the use of temporal deontic assignments on activities as a means to declaratively capture the control-flow semantics that reside in business regulations and business policies. In particular, we introduce PENELOPE, a language to express temporal rules about the obligations and permissions in a business interaction, and an algorithm to generate compliant sequence-flow-based process models that can be used in business process design.

Organizations are often faced with managing a variety of processes. These range from predefined to emergent. There has been very little work on supporting emergent processes many of which are founded on collaboration between process workers. A variety of technologies are available to support collaboration. However, people in most business processes still use the basic technologies such as e-mail or intranet information portals and do not fully realize the advantages provided by emerging technologies. This paper describes a method for extending collaboration beyond simple exchanges and into collaborative work process support.

There is a growing focus on achieving competitive advantage through the dynamic reconfiguration of the value chain. It is advocated that as a result of conceptual and technology convergence, BPM is now ready to be the enabler of this dynamic reconfiguration capability. Business processing is increasing in complexity. It is proposed that there are two dimensions to complexity: breadth complexity (the range of activity types within a process) and depth complexity (the abstraction levels of process logic within a process). Current process design strategies tend to specialise in specific breadth/depth complexity combinations. Given individual processes can span multiple breadth/depth segments, this specialisation strategy can result in multiple process design strategies and toolsets within the one process. This will prevent true business process dynamic reconfiguration. A number of conceptual and technology developments need to be further evaluated with the objective being an integrated consistent process design strategy across all breadth and depth complexity segments.

Reference models capture best-practice solutions for a specific industry such as retail, banking, or insurance. The models usually cover the whole range of solution components such as product models, business rules, data models, and service models. Over the past years,

business process reference models

have gained increasing attention.

Process merging

is a technique that brings together several process models to create a new process model. In this paper, we introduce process merging for a scenario which focuses on the improvement of an existing AS-IS business process by using a reference process model. We describe an approach that enables a business architect to establish

correspondences

between two process models in a systematic way and show how these correspondences define concrete

refactoring operations

that serve to improve the AS-IS model.

Category:

Industry paper.

Generic reference models are based on the assumption of similarity between enterprises – either cross industrial or within a given sector. The research describes a validated reference metamodel, based on an empirical study of enterprises from various industrial sectors. Drawing on the metamodel, we suggest a methodology and tools for the design and generation of individualized business process models.

Even though the design of business processes most often has to consolidate the knowledge of several process stakeholders, this fact is utilized only to a limited extent by existing modeling methodologies. We address this shortcoming in this paper by building an analogy between database schema design by view integration on the one hand and process modeling on the other hand. In particular, we specify a method for business process design by view integration starting from two views of a process as input. We identify formal semantic relationships between elements of the two process views which are then used to calculate the integrated process model applying the merge operator. Finally, the integrated model is optimized using reduction rules. A case study with two EPC business process models from the SAP reference model demonstrates the applicability of our approach.

The accurate prediction of business process performance during its design phase can facilitate the assessment of existing processes and the generation of alternatives. In this paper, an approximation method to estimate the cycle time of a business process is introduced. First, we propose a process execution scheme, with which Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) can control the execution of processes. Second, an approximation method for analyzing its cycle time, based on queueing theory, is presented. We consider agents as queueing servers with multi-class customers and predict the response time of the agents. The cycle time of the whole process is calculated using the expected response time and process structure, taking into account parallel process execution. Finally, the results from the analytical approximation are validated against those of a simulation. This analysis can be used to obtain an optimal process execution plan.

Surviving in today’s competitive market demands that enterprises improve the efficiency of their business processes not only by their automation, as they have done for years, but also by gaining intelligence about processes that reduce costs and improve performance. Business Process Intelligence (BPI) is an emerging, interdisciplinary area that aims at developing models, techniques and tools to improve different aspects of how business processes are modeled and conducted. BPI is not only the application of Business Intelligence techniques to business processes but it also integrates contributions from other research areas like BAM (Business Activity Monitoring), BOM (Business Operations Management), BPM (Business Performance Management), and others.

The application of process mining techniques to real-life corporate environments has been of an ad-hoc nature so far, focused on proving the concept. One major reason for this rather slow adoption has been the complicated task of transforming real-life event log data to the MXML format used by advanced process mining tools, such as ProM. In this paper, the ProM Import Framework is presented, which has been designed to bridge this gap and to build a stable foundation for the extraction of event log data from any given PAIS implementation. Its flexible and extensible architecture, adherence to open standards, and open source availability make it a versatile contribution to the general BPI community.

Process-aware information systems should enable the flexible alignment of business processes to new requirements by supporting deviations from the predefined process model at runtime. To facilitate such dynamic process changes we have adopted techniques from case-based reasoning (CBR). In particular, our existing approach allows to capture the semantics of ad-hoc changes, to support their memorization, and to enable their reuse in upcoming exceptional situations. To further improve change reuse this paper presents an approach for discovering dependencies between ad-hoc modifications from change history. Based on this information better user assistance can be provided when dynamic process changes have to be made.

The theory of regions and the algorithms for synthesizing a Petri net model from a transition system, which are based on this theory, have interesting practical applications – in particular in the design of electronic circuits. In this paper, we show that this theory can be also applied for mining the underlying process from the user interactions with a document management system. To this end, we combine an algorithm that we called activity mining with such Petri net synthesis algorithms. We present the basic idea of this approach, show some first results, and compare them with classical process mining techniques. The main benefit is that, in combination, the activity mining algorithm and the synthesis algorithms do not need a log of the activities, which is not available when the processes are supported by a document management system only.

Complexity has undesirable effects on, among others, the correctness, maintainability, and understandability of business process models. Yet, measuring complexity of business process models is a rather new area of research with only a small number of contributions. In this paper, we survey findings from neighboring disciplines on how complexity can be measured. In particular, we gather insight from software engineering, cognitive science, and graph theory, and discuss in how far analogous metrics can be defined on business process models.

Bearing in mind the changeable and complicated needs of business environment, in this paper we examine the necessity of evolution in the traditional decision support techniques. Our aim is to intensify the need for integrated performance measurement and management, as a way to ameliorate the existing tools for decision making, which are currently based on historical data. Because of the nature of challenges and trends in the retail industry, it is considered to be an appropriate application scenario. In addition to that, a framework is proposed and a case study is described as a proof of our claim.

Mining, discovering, and integrating process-oriented services has attracted growing attention in the recent years. Workflow precedence graph and workflow block structures are two important factors for comparing and mining processes based on distance similarity measure. Some existing work has done on comparing workflow designs based on their precedence graphs. However, there lacks of standard distance metrics for comparing workflows that contain complex block structures such as parallel OR, parallel AND. In this paper we present a quantitative approach to modeling and capturing the similarity and dissimilarity between different workflow designs, focusing on similarity and dissimilarity between the block structures of different workflow designs. We derive the distance-based similarity measures by analyzing the workflow block structure of the participating workflow processes in four consecutive phases. We first convert each workflow dependency graph into a block tree by using our block detection algorithm. Second, we transform the block tree into a binary tree to provide a normalized reference structure for distance based similarity analysis. Third, we construct a binary branch vector by encoding the binary tree. Finally, we calculate the distance metric between two binary branch vectors.

A novel approach to model processes and workflows is presented. It is based on the OntoDLP language, an extension of Disjunctive Logic Programming with object-oriented features. Compared to traditional models, the approach enables knowledge inference on dynamic structures of the process, thanks to the reasoning capabilities of OntoDLP. Moreover, the approach can be also used to redefine and classify existing workflow schemes. Indeed, their execution traces, produced by workflow engines, can be easily imported through the mapping facilities of the underlying metamodel, and eventually organized into taxonomic structures for modeling different execution-patterns.

The agility of an enterprise increasingly depends on its ability to dynamically set up new business processes or to modify existing ones, and to quickly adapt its information systems to these process changes. Companies are therefore developing a growing interest in concepts, technologies and systems that help them to flexibly align their businesses and engineering processes to meet changing needs and to optimize their interactions with customers and business partners.

Management of dynamic processes in an important issue in rapidly changing organizations. Workflow management systems are systems that use detailed process models to drive the business processes. Current business process modelling languages and models are of

imperative

nature – they strictly prescribe how to work. Systems that allow users to maneuver within the process model or even change the model while working are considered to be the most suitable for dynamic processes management. However, in many companies it is not realistic to expect that end-users are able to change their processes. Moreover, the imperative nature of these languages forces designer to over-specify processes, which results in frequent changes. We propose a fundamental paradigm shift for flexible process management and propose a more

declarative

approach. Declarative models specify what should be done without specifying how it should be done. We propose the

ConDec language

for modelling and enacting dynamic business processes. ConDec is based on temporal logic rather than some imperative process modelling language.

The coordination of complex process structures is a fundamental task for enterprises, such as in the automotive industry. Usually, such process structures consist of several (sub-)processes whose execution must be coordinated and synchronized. Effecting this manually is both ineffective and error-prone. However, we can benefit from the fact that these processes are correlated with product structures in many application domains, such as product engineering. Specifically, we can utilize the assembly of a complex real object, such as a car consisting of different mechanical, electrical or electronic subcomponents. Each sub-component has related design or testing processes, which have to be executed within an overall process structure according to the product structure. Our goal is to enable product-driven (i.e., data-driven) process modeling, execution and adaptation. We show the necessity of considering the product life cycle and the role of processes, which are triggering state transitions within the product life cycle. This paper discusses important issues related to the design, enactment and change of data-driven process structures. Our considerations are based on several case studies we conducted for engineering processes in the automotive industry.

Almost at every tier of software architecture, business rules crosscut several parts of process management such as workflows, task assignments, and business transactions. Managing business rules on its own hence improves the dynamism of processes in the sense of modeling, implementing, executing, and even maintenance. Moreover, seamless integration with the rest of the picture may offer further dynamism, but this requires smart and reasonably reflective application frameworks for industrial systems. Here, aspect orientation comes to rescue since it mainly aims the separation of crosscutting concerns such as business rules. This paper presents a practical Aspect-Oriented Framework for rule-based business process management where all aspects, facts, rules and rule-sets can be defined and managed dynamically by means of a GUI console. Moreover, this lightweight framework has been implemented in conformance to Adaptive Object Model to facilitate the process dynamism through declarative techniques for design and bytecode engineering for seamless integration.

This paper comes back to the problem of coordination of cooperative activities with a Workflow management system. First, we describe the differences that we have noted between business processes and cooperative processes. Then we present a set of requirements for a Workflow management system that aims to support cooperative workflow, and among these requirements are high flexibility and dynamicity. Then we describe how this has been taken into account in the development of the Bonita workflow management system that proposes to remove the idea of process model to work only with process instances that can be derived from each others or that can be composed.

Today’s methods for business process modeling like extended event-process-chains only allow the definition of static graph structures. They are not flexible enough for instance to model the change management process of the Mercedes Car Group (MCG) since it requires dynamic selection of process variants, process schema evolution and their (partial) propagation on running workflows, arbitrary dynamic process jumps and changes, etc. We have developed an approach for modeling agile processes based on goals and context rules, which enables the required flexibility. Additionally it is possible to map such a process model to a run-time infrastructure for process execution.

Following the success of the first workshop, ENEI’2006 (http : // www.loria.fr/~nacer/BPM-ENEI05/ENEI-CfP.html), this second event addressed computer- supported integration and interoperability of enterprise applications and software. Indeed, enterprises are provided with collections of heterogeneous applications and software tools that were neither designed nor developed to favor their interaction and their cooperation.

The problem is more crucial when one considers networked enterprises and enterprise expansion (through, for instance, alliances or mergers). Moreover, interoperability within an enterprise and between enterprises is not limited to data interoperability but should also consider additional levels like applications, business models, process models, enterprise models, and their supporting systems and software.

Service Science is a new term for a new paradigm which aims at the solution of an obvious problem: How to make the increasing fusion of business and IT successful in a dynamically changing and risk adverse environment? This question has to be raised at different levels of abstraction, from macroeconomic viewpoints circulating around qualities of service societies to service oriented architectures of business applications. We worked in an interdisciplinary team consisting of industrial engineers and distributed system experts on the issue of business and IT alignment in a well-defined system, namely the shop-floor domain in discrete production industry. The result of this work is an ANSI/ISA 95 compliant model-driven methodology for manufacturing operations management. This methodology was evaluated by means of the realization of a SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) demo scenario for production operations management.

The “Babel tower effect”, induced by the heterogeneity of applications available in the operation of enterprises brings to a consistent lack of “exchangeability” and risk of semantic loss whenever cooperation has to take place within the same enterprise. Generally speaking, this kind of problem falls within the umbrella of interoperability between local reference information models .This position paper discuss some idea on this field and traces a research roadmap to make enterprise interoperable on the basis of this statement to face interoperability of RIMs by focusing the attention on the product. By applying a transformation between local information models into an

“ontological reference model” centred on the product

it is possible to insure applications interoperability.

Interdependence between the subsystems of an enterprise is one of the driving reasons for integrating the enterprise. Integration attempts to manage those interdependencies so all subsystems work harmoniously together to achieve the enterprise goals. Prior to embarking on an enterprise integration project the interdependencies need to be analyzed. Unfortunately, interdependence between subsystems is still poorly conceptualized. This paper develops a modeling and measurement formalism to analyze interdependence in the enterprise. The model defines interdependence and characterizes the strength of the interdependence through relational measurement theory. The model is supported by empirical findings and illustrated through a case study. Limitations of current conceptualizations of interdependence are discussed and remedies are proposed. The primary contribution is a formal model to define and analyze interdependence in an enterprise, an activity that should occur as part of all enterprise integration projects.

This paper presents a framework and a tool devised to aid in obtaining information interoperability between enterprise applications. The approach has its foundations in the principles of model-driven architecture (MDA) and architecture-driven modernisation (ADM). The key idea is that mappings between different information formats are defined at a platform-independent level, and that the mechanisms that actually perform the needed data conversion are generated based on the mappings according to the relevant platforms of the systems at hand.

Efficient business-to-business collaboration needs an IT-architecture that allows for a preferably automatic configuration of integration services and flexibly supports different collaboration scenarios. This paper presents an approach to construct a B2B protocol from single protocol fragments that address specific collaboration aspects and that are implemented by single components of an B2B integration architecture. Therefore, the resulting B2B protocol description will be mapped to an architecture composition specification in a second step. For the purpose of protocol construction, different types of dependencies between protocols will be described as well as an abstract business transaction pattern that will be extended and refined during the B2B protocol construction process.

Business Process Management Systems are largely used nowadays. However, most process models are started from scratch, not having reuse promoted. Large enterprises not using a unique integrated system, and also some of them that do, have the same business process implemented in a variety of ways, due to differences in their units’ cultures or environments. A P2P tool is proposed as a way of cooperatively developing business processes models, minimizing the time needed to develop new models, reducing the differences among similar processes conducted in distinct organization units, enhancing the quality of models and promoting reuse.

In this paper, we propose a generic decisional model allowing to evaluate in a total way (physical flows, financial flows) plannings for any system contained in supply chain. We present a methodology for decision-making aid software conception. This methodology use modelling and simulation concept and show the interest of going towards Advanced Budgeting and Scheduling software for complexes supply chains performance evaluation. To show the generic character of the decisional approach, we apply the chaining of models suggested to the logistic process of Health Care Supply Chain. We give the metrics resulting from the modelling and the simulation of the patient treatment in the Hospital system.

Web Services-based business processes spread over the boundaries of companies, requiring the integration of customers, suppliers and partners to achieve inter-organizational business goals. According to organizational rules temporal constraints, like deadlines, must be defined for processes. Violation of these constraints usually results in increased cost and reduced quality of service. Advanced workflow time management approaches allow the prediction of eventually arising time constraint violations and enables proactive initiation of evasive ”self healing” actions. This saves time, avoids unnecessary task-compensations and therefor decreases costs. In this paper we present an architecture for Web Service Composition environments which enables the usage of advanced predictive and proactive time management features.

In this paper, we define a reference conceptual framework to organize

ontology knowledge spaces

and related

semantic collaboration schemes

for coordinated and virtual access to heterogeneous and distributed information resources inside and outside the enterprise, at both intra- and inter-enterprise level under different collaboration requirements and goals. The framework exploits ontology knowledge spaces and enabling services for searching and retrieving the relevant information resources, namely those semantically related to a target request, both in a stable and emergent collaboration scenarios.

The paper presents the outcomes of a practical experiment aimed at the identification of the various types of annotations that can be attached to enterprise strategic data models. The work is part of a more extensive experimentation on different enterprise models perspectives developed inside the ”Semantic Enrichment of Models and Architecture & Platforms” task group of the FP6 IST-508-011 NoE INTEROP, whose goal is to evaluate the appropriateness (and the possible incompleteness) of existing semantic enrichment concepts, techniques, services and tools. Besides the need for multiple ontologies, the experiment enlighten a rather new perspective with respect to the literature on semantic annotation, related to the fact that mathematical objects have to be taken into consideration.

Nowadays, many data- and/or computation-intensive applications in the area of e-science and e-business involve coordinated sharing of highly distributed resources in a grid environment. In this context, a collaborative workflow management system is always required as part of the sophisticated problem solving process. Efficient management of workflow in grid environments has become increasingly important. Issues such as grid workflow infrastructure based on the Grid toolkits, grid workflow modeling and specification, grid workflow verification and validation, and decentralized grid workflow execution based on peer-to-peer technology have already evoked a high degree of interest.

With the success of the 1st workshop, which was held in Melbourne, Australia in 2005, the 2nd International Workshop on Grid and Peer-to-Peer based Workflows (GPWW) was held in conjunction with the 4th International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM 2006), in Vienna, Austria. The aim of this workshop was to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia, industry and governments to report advances in grid and peer-to-peer based workflow research.

In this position paper, we propose a new generation workflow system for grid services. We observe that grid computing has become an increasingly important application domain in computer science. Grid services — a new technology based on web services — are expected to become the de facto standard for grid computing. Similar to web services, an effective mechanism is needed for the composition of grid services. Existing technologies, however, have a number of important drawbacks: they have limited or no support for modularization of crosscutting concerns, for dynamic workflow adaptation, and for high-performance computing. We propose a new generation workflow system that is tailored specifically for grid services, and that tackles these problems, among others.

To cope with the competitiveness of the market place, e-business applications should be developed exploiting the flexibility of service oriented paradigm and the challenges of the grid computing technologies and should guarantee the fulfillment of quality requirements. In this paper we present a reference framework to support the execution of Web services based e-business applications in autonomic grid environments. Specifically, we tackle the problem of selection of Web services that assure the optimum mapping between each abstract Web service of a business process and a Web service which implements the abstract description, such that the overall quality of service perceived by the user is maximized. The proposed solution guarantees the fulfillment of global constraints, considers variable quality of service profile of component Web services and the long term process execution.

Web service technology is a representative means of heterogeneous system integration and communication. Process language standards, such as WS-BPEL and WS-CDL, have accelerated the usability of web services in business area. However, recently emerging web service devices in ubiquitous environments still have a difficulty in coordinating their processes because of the limited computing power and storage. This research proposes a framework of event-based process enactment for ubiquitous web service devices. The framework adopts P2P architecture where devices communicate with one another via web services eventing. The schema of ECA rules and messaging protocol are presented for P2P process enactment so that service devices can interact each other and accomplish their process execution based on the ECA rules. Our proposed framework is expected to be useful in ubiquitous service environments since it enables a scalable and light-weighted process enactment through event-based web service technology.

BPEL4WS is a well-established business process standard that can be used to orchestrate service-based workflows. However, the rapid growth and automation demands of e-business and grid applications require BPEL4WS to provide enhanced semantic annotations to achieve the goal of business processes automation. Here, OWL-S (OWL for Web Services) is designed to represent such kind of semantic information. Furthermore, there exists a similarity in the conceptual model of OWL-S and BPEL4WS that can be employed to overcome the lack of semantics in BPEL4WS by mapping the BPEL4WS process model to the OWL-S suite of ontologies. The mapped OWL-S service can be used to increase flexibility and to automate BPEL based grid scenarios even further. This is achieved by dynamic discovery, composition and invocation of OWL-S services, for example within e-business and grid environments. Hence, the aim of this paper is to establish a mapping from the BPEL process model to the complete OWL-S suite of ontologies. We present a mapping strategy and a tool supporting this strategy. This allows the semantic annotation of workflows defined as BPEL4WS processes to enable the automation of a variety of e-business tasks.

The premise behind ‘third wave’ Business Process Management (BPM

1

) is effective support for change at levels. Business Process Modeling (BPM

2

) notations such as BPMN are used to effectively conceptualize and communicate process configurations to relevant stakeholders. In this paper we argue that the management of change throughout the business process model lifecycle requires greater conceptual support achieved via a combination of complementary notations. As such the focus in this paper is on the co-evolution of operational (BPMN) and organizational (

i

*) models. Our intent is to provide a way of expressing changes, which arise in one model, effectively in the other model. We present constrained development methodologies capable of guiding an analyst when reflecting changes from an

i

* model to a BPMN model and vice-versa.

These proceedings contain the papers accepted for presentation at the “Advances in Semantics for Web services (semantics4ws 2006)” workshop held in Vienna, Austria, on September 4, 2006, in conjunction with the Fourth International Conference on Business Process Mangement (BPM 2006).

The main topics of this workshop are related to applicability of semantic technologies to Web services. Web services have added a new level of functionality to the current Web by taking a first step towards seamless integration of distributed software components using Web standards. Nevertheless, current Web service technologies around SOAP, WSDL and UDDI operate at a syntactic level and, therefore, although they support interoperability (i.e., interoperability between the many diverse application development platforms that exist today) through common standards, they still require human interaction to a large extent. For example, the human programmer has to manually search for appropriate Web services in order to combine them in a useful manner, which limits scalability and greatly curtails the added economic value envisioned with the advent of Web services.

Business services are deliveries of capabilities to consumers. The way such capabilities are selected, combined and delivered makes for the flexibility in services provision compared to, for example, manufacturing of tangible goods. The coordination (‘orchestration’) of services is an essential requirement for the delivery of more complex services. However, current technologies for web service orchestration assume a procedural ‘program-like’ approach that as we argue in this paper reduces the flexibility to adapt the composite service in response to changing requirements. This paper proposes that service orchestration should be carried out at the business level, preserving the business semantics and transformed if required to specific orchestration execution models such as BPEL4WS, using MDA techniques.

Automated service composition is an important approach to create aggregate services out of existing services. Several different approaches towards automated service composition exist. They differ not only in the used algorithms but also in provided functionality. While some support the creation of compositions with alternative or parallel control flow, others are missing this functionality. This diversity yields from a missing consensus on the required functionality to automatically compose real-world services. Hence, with this paper we aim at providing the foundation for such a consensus. We derived the required functionality from multiple business scenarios set up in the Adaptive Services Grid (ASG) project.

With the expectable growth of the number of Web services available on the WWW and service repositories, the need for mechanisms that enable the automatic organization and discovery of services becomes increasingly important. Service classification using standard or proprietary taxonomies is a common and simple facility in this context, complementarily to more sophisticated service management retrieval techniques. In this paper we propose a heuristic approach for the semi-automatic classification of Web services, based on a three-level matching procedure between services and classification categories, assuming a corpus of previously classified services is available. An experimental test of the proposed techniques is reported, showing positive results.

A framework for modeling Semantic Web Service is proposed. It is based on Description Logic (DL), hence it is endowed with a formal semantics and, in addition, it allows for expressing constraints in service descriptions of different strengths, i.e.

Hard

and

Soft Constraints

.

Semantic service discovery

can be performed by matching DL descriptions, expressing both Hard and Soft constraints, and exploiting DL inferences. Additionally, a method for solving the problem of

ranking

services is proposed which is based on the use of a semantic similarity measure for DL. This method can rank (matched) service descriptions on the grounds of their semantic similarity w.r.t. the service request, by preferring those that are able to better satisfy both Hard and Soft Constraints.

In the last few years there has been an increasing interest in studying ontology evolution and versioning for the World Wide Web, in particular, applied to OWL. However, little attention has been given to the problem of Web services evolution, with a focus on OWL-S, an ontology of services recently proposed. In this paper, we show that recent work on Temporal RDF can be extended to support versioning of an ontology of services. We introduce a formal model and a query language that allow accessing different versions of an OWL-S specification. We present the language semantics and discuss complexity issues. We show how our proposal can be implemented within the OWL-S framework.

BPEL

is the most popular language for describing business process and business interaction based on Web services for inter-organizational cooperation. Nevertheless,

BPEL

requires a static binding of services to the flows. We propose in this paper a new approach enabling dynamic binding. This approach consists of, first, providing a high-level description of process, second, abstracting the process behavior using symbolic observation graphs and third providing an efficient algorithm for symbolic observation graphs matching which is used for binding dynamically business processes.