BPAL: A tool for managing semantically enriched conceptual process models

In this paper we will provide an overview of the Business Process Abstract Language (BPAL) Platform, which implements a Business Process (BP) modelling and reasoning environment where the procedural knowledge of a BP can be enriched through ontology-based annotations. The BPAL Platform provides a graphical user interface to ease the definition of a Business Process Knowledge Base that collects the various facets of process knowledge. It also provides a reasoner implementing services for the enactment, verification, retrieval, and composition of processes in the knowledge base. After discussing the functionalities and the architecture of the tool, we report on an experimental evaluation of the whole system, whose results are encouraging and show the viability of the approach.