An Overview of Industrial Process Meta-Models

The transition from object technology to component technology involves taking into consideration an increasing number of new attributes, representing the multiple facets not only of execution-time, but also of development-time entities. A consequence of this is that the definition of the software process is now becoming a central and critical problem. As a contribution to this area, this paper presents an initial investigation in the organization of meta-models of processes. We have selected several well-known proposals like PIF, NIST's PSL, UPM, WfMC workflow model, etc. We express them as related meta-models, with similar presentation mechanisms based on the OMG recommendations: UML (Unified Modeling Language) and MOF (Meta-Object Facility). We observe some similarities, redundancies and incompatibilities between these models. We conclude this work by proposing a hierarchical organization of process meta-models. The two main questions we wish to answer in this preliminary study are the identification of necessary relations between process meta-models and the hypothetical existence of a core process meta-model. The conclusion will discuss some benefits that can be reaped from a regular organization of process models and meta-models, for ensuring the quality of delivered applications, throughout the life cycle.