Omar Chiotti

Extending BPMN 2.0: Method and Tool Support

There are two major pitfalls in the development of extensions to the BPMN 2.0 metamodel. First, there is a lack of methodological guides considering the extensibility approach supported by the extension mechanism of the language. Second, BPMN does not provide any graphical notation for the representation of extensions. This work proposes a method based on Model-Driven Architecture for the development of extensions to the BPMN 2.0 metamodel. It enables the conceptual modeling of extensions by using UML, their graphical representation in terms of the BPMN extension mechanism, and their transformation into XML Schema documents that can be processed by BPMN tools. A tool supporting the proposed method is also presented.

Towards ontological engineering: a process for building a domain ontology from scratch in public administration

Abstract: The state reformation that took place in the 1990s and the technological explosion have ledgovernments to reframe their way of working so as to be able to offer new and better services for citizens.To achieve thisgoal, major obstacles mustbe overcome,such as the problem ofsemantic heterogeneitythat leadsto more difficult recovery and integration of information from different government sectors. Although in theprivate sector solutions to this problem through the building of ontologies have already been set out, thecharacteristics of government itself have led the direct application of these practices to fail. This paper presents aprocess for building a domain ontology in the public sector from scratch. In addition, it presents the applicationof this process for building an ontology for the Budgetary Domain of Santa Fe Province (Argentina).Keywords: domain ontology, development process, e-government 1. IntroductionGovernment organizations are moving towardsthe use of web technologies, leading to unprece-dented levels of data exchange. However, ex-changing data does not mean that the data areunderstood. There still exists a strong need tohelp people and machines to understand themeaning, or semantics, of the data and applica-tions.Nowadays,thedevelopmentofontologiestends to allow people and machines to sharesemantic data and software applications.Since ontologies have gained recognitionfrom academic and industrial areas, there areseveraldefinitionsofontology.Thesedefinitionscome from different disciplines and have beenused for different purposes. In informationscience, according to Smith (2003) ‘an ontologyis a dictionary of terms formulated in a canoni-cal syntax and with commonly accepted defini-tions designed to yield a lexical or taxonomicalframework for knowledge representation whichcan be shared by different information systemscommunities’. In order to build an ontology, wemust come to an agreement. This agreement hasto follow a comprehensive ontology engineeringprocess.Several methodologies have been proposed tostructure this process and to facilitate its devel-opment. The success of these methodologies hasbeen demonstrated on a number of applications(Corcho et al., 2005). Nevertheless, ontologyDOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0394.2008.00471.x

A conceptual model and technological support for organizational knowledge management

Knowledge Management (KM) models proposed in the literature do not take into account all necessary aspects for effective knowledge management. First, to address this issue, this paper presents a set of requirements that any KM model or initiative should take into account to cover all aspects implied in knowing processes. These requirements were identified through a critical and evolutionary analysis of KM. Second; the paper presents a new distributed KM Conceptual Model whose building blocks are the knowledge activities involved in knowing processes. These activities are: knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, and knowledge representation and retrieval. This model provides a holistic view of KM whose purpose is helping managers understand the scope of this initiative, and supplying a guide for research and implementation in organizations. In this sense, the model presents KM as a highly social rather than technological process. Third; the paper briefly describes an architecture to provide a technological support for knowledge representation and retrieval activities of the proposed KM Conceptual Model. This architecture allows implementing a distributed organizational memory that helps to represent the knowledge context through an ontological model, providing a local perspective of each knowledge domain within the organization. Strategies for knowledge annotation, knowledge retrieval, and ontology evolution are briefly described and results of preliminary performance analysis are shown. Finally; based on the available literature, a comparative analysis of different KM models shows their adequacy for previously presented requirements. A KM background and a discussion of failure factors associated to KM are presented.A set of requirements that any KM model or initiative should met is defined.A comprehensive KM model based on the defined requirements is depicted.An architecture for distributed organizational memory is developed.Semantic treatment of knowledge sources by information retrieval strategies is proposed.

An Ontology-driven Document Retrieval Strategy for Organizational Knowledge Management Systems

Enterprises are inserted in a competitive environment in which knowledge is vital to survive in the current global market. Competition is no longer conceived as it was in traditional markets. In this global market, knowledge is considered an asset that has an economic value for an organization and a strategic resource used to increase productivity and offer stability in dynamic competitive environments. Such significance of knowledge implies the need for protecting this vital resource by safeguarding the right access, its persistence over time, and its adequate retrieval. In this work, we propose an organizational memory architecture, and annotation and retrieval information strategies based on domain ontologies that take in account complex words to retrieve information through natural language queries. To test these strategies, we implemented a flexible framework to experiment with knowledge retrieval approaches. Finally, experimental results are evaluated and analyzed through standard measures.

A Modeling Approach for Collaborative Business Processes Based on the UP-ColBPIP Language

The modeling of collaborative business processes is an important issue in order to allow enterprises to implement B2B collaborations with their business partners. We have proposed an MDA-based methodology for the modeling, verification and implementation of collaborative processes. Since collaborative process models are the main artifacts in this MDA-based methodology, a suitable modeling approach is required to design collaborative processes. In this work we describe a modeling approach for collaborative processes based on the UP-ColBPIP language, which is oriented to support the model-driven development of collaborative processes and B2B information systems. The behavior of collaborative processes is modeled through interaction protocols. Enhances to the control flow constructors of interaction protocols are introduced. In addition, we describe an Eclipse-based tool that supports this language.

Modeling of the supervising control system of a multipurpose batch plant

A supervisory control of a multipurpose batch plant supervises that the plant is operated according to the schedule of production orders set by the scheduling module. The supervisory control depends on the plant topology, which is not defined a priori but generated while scheduling the production orders. This requires that the supervisory control system be able to generate the control structure after the generation of plant topologies. In the first part of this work we present a framework to represent the supervisory control of an order driven multipurpose batch plant. The framework is based on a strategy that uses Petri nets to describe and analyze the supervisory control of a process. This strategy permits the automation of the modeling of the supervisory control. Based on this framework we developed a supervisory control support system (SCSS) of an order driven multipurpose batch plant. In the second part of this work we present a description of an object oriented analysis and design of this SCSS.

Developing a knowledge management multi-agent system using JaCaMo

Recent research on social and organisational aspects of multi-agent systems has led to practical organisational models and the idea of organisation-oriented programming. These organisational models help agents to achieve shared (global) goals of the multi-agent system. Having an organisational model is an important advance, but this model needs to be integrated to an environment infrastructure and agent-oriented programming platforms. JaCaMo is the first fully operational programming platform that integrates three levels of multi-agent abstractions: an agent programming language, an organisational model, and an environment infrastructure. For better showcasing the advantages of a fully-fledged multi-agent platform, this paper presents a concrete agent-based architecture to proactively supply knowledge to knowledge-intensive workflows which has been designed using JaCaMo.

Volterra NN-based behavioral model for new wireless communications devices

This paper presents a neural network-based behavioral model for accurately reproducing the nonlinear and dynamic behavior of new wireless communication devices. Moreover, an efficient procedure to extract a behavioral Volterra model from the parameters of the NN-based model is explained, thus providing a simple way to construct very compact and accurate models, which may provide open information about device performance. Experimental tests try to demonstrate the validity of the proposed approach, for characterization of RF transistors and power amplifiers, showing strong nonlinearities and memory effects in the analyzed bandwidth.

Organizational Knowledge Sources Integration through an Ontology-Based Approach: The Onto-DOM Architecture

Nowadays, there is a large number of Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives implemented in organizations, which often fail to manage the natural heterogeneity of organizational knowledge sources. To address heterogeneity, documentation overload and lack of context we propose Onto-DOM, a question-answering ontology-based strategy implemented within a Distributed Organizational Memory. Onto-DOM is a portable question-answering system that accepts natural language queries and, using a domain ontology, transforms and contextualizes the query eliminating the inherent natural language ambiguity. At the same time, it recovers those knowledge objects that are most likely to contain the answer.

Ontology and XML-based Specifications for Collaborative B2B Relationships

A collaborative B2B relationship implies jointly executing business processes. This relationship demands a complete access to available information and knowledge to support decision-making activities between trading partners. To support information interchange between enterprises in collaborative B2B ecommerce there are some XML-based standards technologies, like RosettaNet, ebXML and OAGIS. However, XML does not express semantics by itself. So, these standards only provide an infrastructure to support the information interchange. They are suitable to integrate information but not to support decision-making activities where a common understanding of the information is needed. In this paper we analyze the integration of these standards with ontology to describe the meaning of the information and knowledge interchanged between trading partners to jointly execute business processes. Furthermore, we define the main components of an ontology development environment to support the entire ontology lifecycle.