Ontology-based Representation and Reasoning on Process Models: A Logic
  Programming Approach
  We propose a framework grounded in Logic Programming for representing and
reasoning about business processes from both the procedural and ontological
point of views. In particular, our goal is threefold: (1) define a logical
language and a formal semantics for process models enriched with ontology-based
annotations; (2) provide an effective inference mechanism that supports the
combination of reasoning services dealing with the structural definition of a
process model, its behavior, and the domain knowledge related to the
participating business entities; (3) implement such a theoretical framework
into a process modeling and reasoning platform. To this end we define a process
ontology coping with a relevant fragment of the popular BPMN modeling notation.
The behavioral semantics of a process is defined as a state transition system
by following an approach similar to the Fluent Calculus, and allows us to
specify state change in terms of preconditions and effects of the enactment of
activities. Then we show how the procedural process knowledge can be seamlessly
integrated with the domain knowledge specified by using the OWL 2 RL rule-based
ontology language. Our framework provides a wide range of reasoning services,
including CTL model checking, which can be performed by using standard Logic
Programming inference engines through a goal-oriented, efficient, sound and
complete evaluation procedure. We also present a software environment
implementing the proposed framework, and we report on an experimental
evaluation of the system, whose results are encouraging and show the viability
of the approach.
