PIF The Process Interchange Format

This document describes the rationales and the specification of the Process Interchange Format (PIF). PIF is an interchange format designed to help automatically exchange process descriptions among a wide variety of process tools such as process modelers, workflow software, flow charting tools, planners, process simulation systems, and process repositories. These tools interoperate by translating between their native format and PIF. Then any system will be able to automatically exchange process descriptions with any other system without having to write translators for each pair of such systems. This document specifies the PIF-CORE 1.2, i.e. the core set of object types (such as activities, agents, and prerequisite relations) that can be used to describe the basic elements of any process. The document also describes a framework for extending the core set of object types to include additional information needed in specific applications. These extended descriptions are exchanged in such a way that the common elements are interpretable by any PIF translator and the additional elements are interpretable by any translator that knows about the extensions.