can be considered to be a view of an internal business process with the internal logic not visible, similar to public views on private workflows. The m3po ontology unifies both internal and external business processes, combining reference models and languages from the workflow and choreography domains. The m3po ontology is written in WSML. The related ontology m3pl, written in PSL using the extension FLOWS (First Order Logic for Web Services), enables the extraction of choreography interfaces from workflow models. The m3po ontology combines features of the following reference models and languages: XPDL – a standard for exchanging workflow models, without runtime information, between different workflow management systems PSL – an ontology that allows the capture of the semantics of workflow models and enables translations of models between workflow management systems YAWL – a research workflow language that supports all workflow patterns directly BPEL – an executable business process language and includes an abstract protocol WS-CDL – a multi-party collaboration model The m3po ontology is organized using five key aspects of workflow specifications and workflow management. Because different workflow models put a different emphasis on the five aspects, the most elaborate reference model for each aspect was used and combined into m3po. Functional and Behavioural – the most important concepts are processType, processOccurrence, activityType and activityOccurrence Informational – defined by data and data-flow Organizational – defines who is responsible for carrying out a specific task; security related issues Operational – interaction of the workflows with their environment by manual tasks performed by users and automatic tasks performed by automated computer programs Orthogonal – scheduling based on time; integrity and failure recovery See also Automated planning and scheduling Business process Manufacturing process management Object Process Methodology Sequence of events Systems theory References External links Laboratory for Applied Ontology (LOA) Semantics Utilised for Process Management within and between Enterprises (SUPER) Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering (DOLCE) Onto-Med multi meta model process engineering (m3pe) Automated planning and scheduling Business process Ontology (information science) Process philosophy