New OCEL 2.0 Standard for Object-Centric Process Mining Released!

17/10/2023

New OCEL 2.0 Standard for Object-Centric Process Mining Released!

  Ocel2-Miner

Today, we released OCEL 2.0. OCEL stands for Object-Centric Event Log, an exchange format for Object-Centric Event Data (OCED), and serves as the starting point for Object-Centric Process Mining (OCPM). With this new standard, we provide a detailed specification (including metamodel and formalization), three exchange formats (SQLite, XML, and JSON), several example data sets, libraries, and software tools. The inaugural release of OCEL, known as OCEL 1.0, made its debut in 2020, triggering the development of an array of OCPM techniques. With the advent of OCEL 2.0, we add the ability to change object attributes, provide information on object relationships, and qualify these relationships to other objects or specific events. Just like in OCEL 1.0, an event may refer to any number of objects of different types. This removes the "straightjacket" of a single-case notion.

Traditional approaches for process modeling and process analysis tend to focus on one type of objects (also referred to as cases or instances), and each event refers to precisely one such object. This leads to a distorted view of reality, causing the well-known convergence and divergence problems. Also, extraction is often time-consuming and needs to be repeated when new questions emerge. Object-Centric Process Mining (OCPM) takes a more holistic and comprehensive approach to process improvement by considering multiple object types and events that involve any number of objects. Using the new OCEL 2.0 standard and the related OCPM tools, it is possible to view all operational activities from any perspective using a single source of truth. There is no need to extract the data when changing the viewpoint. This allows for unprecedented flexibility, enabled by on-demand process mining views. OCPM will also reveal novel and valuable improvement opportunities for problems that live at the intersection points of processes and organizational units. This explains the significance of OCEL 2.0.

Check our updated website https://www.ocel-standard.org for the specification, the relational database (SQLite), XML, and JSON formats, the open-access data sets, software libraries, and software tools that make it easy to start using the OCED standard.

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