Workflow ontology
The Workflow ontology
This workflow ontology is used to capture both sequential and state-based workflows. A workflow is an instantiation of the Workflow class (or subclass) in the ontology. The ontology captures the structure of the workflow - using classes, and a specific workflow - in the instances, e.g. a voting workflow. When used, we need another layer to capture an executable workflow, e.g., the voting workflow for user 1 when in state 3.
This ontology is intended to be used with Collaborative_Protege to support generic collaboration workflows. The access policies in Collaborative Protege are implemented as part of the server configuration. The access policies are also stored as instances of an ontology. Read more here.
Download
The workflow ontology is currently in Frames format, but can be easily converted to OWL.
Download from here.
Open workflow_ontology.pprj. Browse an example of workflow in the Instances Tab. Look for the instances of the Workflow subclasses.
We have also implemented an application prototype that can execute an instance of a workflow using the JBoss workflow engine. The source code can be browsed here, and it can be checked out from svn with:
svn co http://smi-protege.stanford.edu/repos/protege/workflow-mgmt/trunk workflow-management
Resources
Read more about this ontology and its use:
- A Generic Ontology For Collaborative Ontology-Development Workflows, A. Sebastian, N. F. Noy, T. Tudorache, M. A. Musen. 16th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2008), Catania, Italy, Springer. Published in 2008.
- Customizable Workflow Support for Collaborative Ontology Development , A. Sebastian, T. Tudorache, N. F. Noy, M. A. Musen. 4th International Workshop on Semantic Web Enabled Software Engineering (SWESE) at ISWC 2008, Karlsruhe, Germany. Published in 2008.
Authors: Abraham Sebastian
Maintainers: Protege team
