Using Semantic Queries to Enable Dynamic Service Invocation for Processes in the Internet of Things
Steffen Huber, Ronny Seiger, André Kühnert, Thomas K. Schlegel · 2016
Internet of Things-aware process execution imposes new requirements on process modeling, that are outside the scope of current modeling languages. Internet of Things (IoT) devices may vanish, appear or stay unknown during process execution. Therefore, design time process resource allocation is not feasible. Additionally, device capabilities are only available in a certain real world context at runtime, which is not considered by current service-based approaches for encapsulating device functionality. This paper presents an approach covering both service discovery and invocation for IoT-aware processes. We developed a process meta-model extension to directly include semantic queries into process steps. This allows for capability-based and context-sensitive process resource allocation and service invocation at runtime. In addition, we present a semantic access layer for IoT devices to facilitate communication between process engine and IoT devices. The evaluation of our approach shows an increase of flexibility for scalable, IoT-aware process execution.