Executable Ontological Business Process Model

Often business processes modelling is confined to Flow Chart like representation and the models are not amenable to analysis (e.g., simulation) to study their behaviour. As a consequence, validation and verification of such models are merely conducted manually based on the intuition, experience and knowledge of analysts and processes managers. While for small models this may not represent a challenge, for complex processes it is very challenging to avoid inaccuracies – broken flows, missing loops, deadlocks. Execution (or simulation) of models using computer tools would surface most of errors and better enforce model correctness. In this paper we introduce a modelling method and technique aiming at developing executable ontological business process models. The proposed method is theoretically based on the concept of Business Transaction derived from the DEMO Methodology, and diagrammatically on the formal semantics of Petri net. The transaction concept is used for conceiving the organization’s social reality, and the formalism of Petri nets as a modelling technique. For the coherence between these two as a whole, a few aspects were to be investigated.