Research on OWL-based process model transformation for interoperability

It is difficult for a people to build a process model with a modelling language that he is not familiar with. To provide more choices of process modelling language to users from different enterprises in distributed modelling, and to resolve consequent interoperability problems of heterogeneous enterprise models, meta-model ontologies of several modelling languages are built separately using Web Ontology Language (OWL) as common meta-meta-model. Model transmission can be implemented by translating models into OWL files and parsing them. Model transformation between different modelling languages can be implemented by ontology mapping between these meta-models in OWL format. Structural correspondences of the meta-models are mapped directly by declaring a class in one meta-model ontology equivalent to a class in another. More complex transformations are specified by generation rules. Models in OWL format act as intermedium to avoid an n mapping specification by bidirectional mapping with models built with different modelling languages. Transformation of following modelling languages is implemented: IDEF3, UML activity diagrams, and a graphic modelling method based on IDEFO and swimlane in UML. The architecture of the distributed modelling tool based on this interoperability is given. Taking advantage of OWL, this model interoperability method can realize transmission and transformation of different modelling languages and provide users with more choices in distributed modelling for efficiency.