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The author: Fedorov I. G. Published in № 4(58) 28 august 2015 year
Rubric: Models and Methods

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Adaptation of Bunge-Wand-Weber ontology for business process modeling

The Bunge–Wand–Weber ontology is widely used in object-oriented development of IT applications. It shows how a real world objects are mapped to the ontology concepts. Wand and Weber suppose that the ontological expressiveness of a modeling language used to describe the world around us, can be assessed by investigating the mapping from a set of language primitives to a set of constructs of the proposed ontology. One of the main success factors of the use of modeling language or notation is its ability to provide a set of modeling primitives, which can be directly mapped to the relevant concepts of Bunge–Wand–Weber ontology. However, the existing Bunge–Wand–Weber ontology is not fully suitable for describing business processes. The analysis shows that the ontology misses the concept of time, the mapping of logical operators of modeling language on the concepts ontology remains unclear, ontology contains no concept necessary to map a performer of process operations. The paper proposes to clarify the distinction between internal and external events, thus introduce a category of time; adds the concept of the actor who initiates the start of the execution or completion of the process operations; change the definition of the transformation, adding the meaning of unit of work that doesn’t change the object, but rout it to the next operation thus allowing to map logical operators. As a result of the proposed adaptation the Bunge — Wanda — Weber ontology becomes adequate to the task of business processes modeling.