Ontology-based Modeling of Service Processes and Services

Service processes and services became an important topic in industry. For example, many enterprises strive to optimize their IT-Services by using process-oriented approaches. Service Processes often cross organizational boundaries: therefore it is highly important that both service provider and service client have a common understanding of terms. A widespread means to achieve this goal are ontologies. However, to completely capture the semantics of service processes and services, an appropriate structure of the ontology has to be developed. The ontology proposed in this paper has four layers and uses eight orthogonal perspectives to differentiate the elements of each layer. By this means, it is possible to capture both the static and the dynamic semantic of service processes and services. Using the ontology, it is possible to clarify the terms in the service processes across organizational boundaries and to avoid the creation of homonyms and synonyms. Thus, the implementation and execution of service processes and services is facilitated.