Multi-Context Systems for Consistency Validation and Querying of Business Process Models

Large organizations today face a growing challenge of managing heterogeneous process collections containing business processes. Explicit semantics inherent to domain-specific models can help alleviate some of the management challenges. Starting with concept definitions, designers can create domain specific processes and eventually generate industry-standard BPMN for use in BPMS solutions. However, in such a multi-layered setting, any of these artefacts (concepts, domain processes and BPMN) can be modified by various stakeholders and changes done by one person may influence models used by others. There is therefore a need for tool support to aid in keeping track of changes done and their impacts on different stakeholders. In this paper, we present a multi-context systems based approach that allows inferring impacts of changes, especially in terms of consistency, and executing semantic queries. In contrast to existing work, our framework allows the co-existence of different formalisms, with potentially different characteristics, offering greater flexibility in knowledge base and tool integration.