Using process ontology together with process editor to facilitate tool integration

Modern software and system collaborative process involves various teams in different development phases thus need efficient solutions for tools integration. In Model-Driven Development, transformation technique is used to allow exchanging models created by different tools. However, in a process, transformation are often defined manually for a tool-incompatible point and rarely reusable. To facilitate the automatic generation of transformation rules for tool integration, we propose to use process ontology together with process editor when modelling process. The idea is using ontology to stock process assets from various sources so that the relations between similar elements in different technical spaces can be established automatically. The process editor enriches the ontology by process elements captured from modelling activities. Then the integrated ontology helps the editor detect tool integration points and complete the process model as well as generate the mappings between concerned process elements.