Abstract
We provide a comprehensive framework for semantic GSM artifacts, discuss in detail its properties, and present main software engineering architectures it is able to capture. The distinguishing aspect of our framework is that it allows for expressing both the data and the lifecycle schema of GSM artifacts in terms of an ontology, i.e., a shared and formalized conceptualization of the domain of interest. To guide the modeling of data and lifecycle we provide an upper ontology, which is specialized in each artifact with specific lifecycle elements, relations, and business objects. The framework thus obtained allows to achieve several advantages. On the one hand, it makes the specification of conditions on data and artifact status attribute fully declarative and enables semantic reasoning over them. On the other, it fosters the monitoring of artifacts and the interoperation and cooperation among different artifact systems. To fully achieve such an interoperation, we enrich our framework by enabling the linkage of the ontology to autonomous database systems through the use of mappings. We then discuss two scenarios of practical interest that show how mappings can be used in the presence of multiple systems. For one of these scenarios we also describe a concrete instantiation of the framework and its application to a real-world use case in the energy domain, investigated in the context of the EU project ACSI.