What if? CCRIM => CCOWL

[Farrukh Najmi <Farrukh.Najmi@Sun.COM>]

I have been looking into OWL and RDF in the context of the Semantic 
Content Management work that we are just starting formally within the 
TC. In that process I have been developing an OWL ontology for ebXML 
Registry Information Model (ebRIM).

Dieter Jenz, a colleague that many of you may already know, has pointed 
me to an interesting  work he has been a key contributor to, called Open 
Business Process Management Ontology (BPMO) [1]. Though the BPMO 
ontology is much broader but parts of it seem to be a mapping of CCTS to 
OWL.

I am particularly intrigued by this work because I believe that OWL may 
be a much richer syntax to express CCTS concepts. Assuming that we have 
decent support for managing OWL ontologies and knowledge bases (Ontology 
+ instance data) in ebXML Registry in the future, this could be a very 
good way to represent CCTS in ebXML Registry.

I realize that tremendous amount of good work has been invested into 
CCRIM. I believe much of the CCRIM work could be leveraged and mapped to 
a CCOWL (CC expresed in OWL syntax).

So the question the the group is whether we should explore re-directing 
our work from CCRIM to CCOWL.

Dieter, I urge you to consider joining the CCRIM SC as well as the soon 
to be approved Semantic Content Management SC within ebXML Registry TC. 
I suspect we will have much value from your contributions. This could 
also provide alignment and synergy between ebXML Registry and BPMO. 
Joining an SC requires joining the ebXML Registry TC which requires 
OASIS membership (corporate or individual).

--
Regards,
Farrukh


[1] Dieter Jenz's description of BPMO

Below are some quotes from Dieter that describe BPMO:

"
There is a WP, which provides a high-level view of the BPMO approach. 
You can find it at 
http://www.bpiresearch.com/Resources/RE_OntBPM/re_ontbpm.htm

The ultimate goal of the ontology is to provide a semantic repository 
backbone, which allows business analysts to define business process 
definitions in a vendor-neutral, platform-neutral, technology-neutral 
format. In a nutshell, business process definitions can be generated in 
various target process definition languages (e.g. XPDL, Staffware, BPEL, 
...) from a single source.

The BPMO also supports the definition of sophisticated public 
(colaborative) business processes, which I would also call 
"multilateral" business processes, since two or more parties need to 
agree on a process definition. In contrast, private processes are 
"unilateral", meaning that a business partner's consent is not required. 
XPDL, BPEL  and other languages fall into this category.

As you know, CCTS and UBL are adequate for the description of business 
documents. In addition, one can use CCTS to describe business entities 
(i.e. the business analyst's view of business objects).  

If you are interested, you can have a look at it at 
http://www.bpiresearch.com/Resources/RE_OSSOntOWL/re_ossontowl.htm . You 
would need the Protege tool, though (http://protege.stanford.edu/).
"