The PIF Process Interchange Format and Framework

This document provides the specification of the Process Interchange Format (PIF) version 1.1. The goal of this work is to develop an interchange format to help automatically exchange process descriptions among a wide variety of business process modeling and support systems such as workflow software, flow charting tools, planners, process simulation systems, and process repositories. Instead of having to write ad hoc translators for each pair of such systems, each system will only need to have a single translator for converting process descriptions in that system into and out of the common PIF format. Then any system will be able to automatically exchange basic process descriptions with any other system. This document describes the PIF-CORE 1.1, i.e. the core set of object types (such as activities, agents, and prerequisite relations) that can be used to describe the basic elements of any process. The document also describes a framework for extending the core set of object types to include additional information needed in specific applications. These extended descriptions are exchanged in such a way that the common elements are interpretable by any PIF translator and the additional elements are interpretable by any translator that knows about the extensions.