Process Interchange Format (PIF)

AIAI is a collaborator on the Process Interchange Format (PIF) Project.

Introduction

Critical in Business Process Reengineering or Enterprise Integration is the ability to share and interlink heterogeneous process models. The goal of the PIF (Process Interchange Format) project is to support the exchange of business process models across different formats and schemas. The project pursues this goal by developing PIF (a common translation language that serves as a bridge among heterogeneous process representations), local translators between PIF and local process representations, and a mechanism for extending PIF to accommodate different expressive needs in a modular way (Partially Shared View).

The PIF project aims to support translations such that process descriptions can be automatically translated back and forth between PIF and other process representations with as little loss of meaning as possible. If translation cannot be done fully automatically, the human efforts needed to assist the translation should be minimized. If a translator cannot translate part of a PIF process description to its target format, it should: (a) translate as much of the description as possible (and not, for example, simply issue an error message and give up); (b) represent any untranslatable parts so that the translator can add them back to the process description when it is translated back into PIF.

Citation

Jintae Lee, Michael Grunninger, Yan Jin, Thomas Malone, Austin Tate, Gregg Yost and other members of the PIF Working Group, The PIF Process Interchange Format and Framework, Version 1.2, The Knowledge Engineering Review Vol 13(1), pp. 91-120, Cambridge University Press, March 1998. 660K RTF file

PIF Contacts

To contact the PIF Working Group send mail to pif-comments@mit.edu.

The Process Interchange Format Working Group has its main web site at http://ccs.mit.edu/pif.

Last updated: Sat Mar 11 12:32:10 2006 by Austin Tate