The rational management of software defects is a fundamental requirement for a mature software in... more The rational management of software defects is a fundamental requirement for a mature software industry. Standards, guides and capability models directly emphasize how important it is for an organization to know and to have a well-established history of failures, errors and defects as they occur in software activities. The problem is that each of these reference models employs its own vocabulary to deal with these phenomena, which can lead to a deficiency in the understanding of these notions by software engineers, potential interoperability problems between supporting tools, and, consequently, to a poorer adoption of these standards and tools in practice. We address this problem of the lack of a consensual conceptualization in this area by proposing a reference conceptual model (domain ontology) of Software Defects, Errors and Failures, which takes into account an ecosystem of software artifacts. The ontology is grounded on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) and is based on well-known standards, guides and capability models. We demonstrate how this approach can suitably promote conceptual clarification and terminological harmonization in this area.
This paper explores the use of " process-related models " – such as Enterprise Architecture (EA) ... more This paper explores the use of " process-related models " – such as Enterprise Architecture (EA) models – as non-ontological resources (NORs) in the Ontology Engineering (OE) trajectory. These models are commonly available in enterprise repositories in process-rich social domains (e.g., e-Government, finance, software engineering, manufacturing), and serve as valuable sources of consolidated knowledge. We focus on the role of EA models in supporting what we are naming here Early Ontology Engineering, comprising the phases of purpose and scope identification as well as the identification of functional requirements for creating domain ontologies. This is because these models characterize, among other aspects, the organizational context and the business motivations/goals. Therefore, they may facilitate the identification of intended uses/purpose of an ontology to be integrated to the EA, as a means to address goals of the organization stakeholders. We show how this approach is being applied in a real-world e-Government project in the Public Security Domain.
— Ontologies play a key role in semantic interoperability projects, capturing the conceptualizati... more — Ontologies play a key role in semantic interoperability projects, capturing the conceptualization underlying the various systems to be integrated. In the case of large information systems landscapes, a single monolithic ontology often becomes hard to design and maintain. In this setting, it is common to divide the ontological model in consistently interlinked modular ontologies, forming an ontology network. This paper explores the role of Enterprise Architecture (EA) models in defining the ontologies in an ontology network. We report on an exploratory study in the scope of an e-Government interoperability project in the area of public security. In the reported study, an EA model provides guidance in the modularization of the ontology network.
Building proper reference ontologies is a hard task. There are a number of methods and tools that... more Building proper reference ontologies is a hard task. There are a number of methods and tools that traditionally have been used to support this task. These include the use of foundational theories, the reuse of domain and core ontologies, the adoption of development methods, as well as the support of proper software tools. In this context, an approach that has gained increasing attention in recent years is the systematic application of ontology patterns. However, a pattern-based approach to ontology engineering requires: the existence of a set of suitable patterns that can be reused in the construction of new ontologies; a proper methodological support for eliciting these patterns, as well as for applying them in the construction of these new models. The goal of this paper is twofold: (i) firstly, we present an approach for deriving conceptual ontology patterns from ontologies. These patterns are derived from ontologies of different generality levels, ranging from foundational to domain ontologies; (ii) secondly, we present guidelines that describe how these patterns can be applied in combination for building reference domain ontologies in a reuse-oriented process. In summary, this paper is about the construction of ontology patterns from on-tologies, as well as the construction of ontologies from ontology patterns.
Ontology design patterns are a promising approach for Ontology Engineering. In this chapter, we i... more Ontology design patterns are a promising approach for Ontology Engineering. In this chapter, we introduce the notion of Ontology Pattern Language (OPL) as a way to organize domain-related ontology patterns. This chapter is organized as follows: Section 7.1 presents the motivation for organizing Domain-Related
Proceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing - SAC '15, 2015
Many efforts have been made for modeling and standardizing software processes. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7, ... more Many efforts have been made for modeling and standardizing software processes. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7, the ISO sub-committee responsible for software and systems engineering, is one of the most important groups devoted to this task. However, standards developed by this committee are frequently inconsistent and even contradictory. This led to the need for an ISO Study Group to investigate the creation of an ontological infrastructure to establish a common conceptualization for underpinning all SC7 standards. This ISO initiative is a work in progress, which has focused on the software process domain and, in particular, considering the ISO/IEC 24744 standard. In this paper, we advocate in favor of using an Ontology Pattern Language (OPL) as the main component of this ontological infrastructure. We present ISP-OPL (ISO-based Software Process OPL), an OPL that can be applied as a basis for harmonizing software process-related standards, favoring reuse when building aligned specific software process ontologies for SE sub-domains. In order to illustrate its application, we also present an ontology about the Requirements Engineering process, developed by using ISP-OPL.
The use of Requirements at Runtime (RRT) is an emerging research area. Many methodologies and fra... more The use of Requirements at Runtime (RRT) is an emerging research area. Many methodologies and frameworks that make use of requirements models during the execution of software can be found in the literature, but very few of them use ontologies to ground the models that are used at runtime. In this paper, we introduce the Runtime Requirements Ontology (RRO), a domain ontology that intends to represent the nature and context of RRT. Following a well-known Ontology Engineering method, we evaluate RRO using verification and validation techniques.
Software reuse is pointed as a key factor for quality and productivity improvement. Ideally, reus... more Software reuse is pointed as a key factor for quality and productivity improvement. Ideally, reuse should occur in all levels of abstraction, but higher levels of abstraction tend to lead to major benefits. In this paper, we present a Reuse-based Requirements Engineering process that focus on reusing ontologies and analysis patterns. Reports about its application are also discussed.
Resumo. Avaliação é parte essencial de diversos processos de software, tais como Garantia da Qual... more Resumo. Avaliação é parte essencial de diversos processos de software, tais como Garantia da Qualidade e Avaliação e Melhoria de Processos. A avaliação de entidades nesse contexto é bastante corriqueira, sendo aplicada, dentre outros, a processos, produtos e recursos. Ainda que a avaliação de cada um desses tipos de entidades tenha suas particularidades, há aspectos comuns que, se propriamente capturados,
Enterprise ontologies are useful for many purposes. Over the years, there have been a number of e... more Enterprise ontologies are useful for many purposes. Over the years, there have been a number of efforts aiming at building them. However, due to the complexity of the enterprise domain, enterprise ontologies tend to be complex and difficult to reuse. In this paper, we advocate in favor of organizing Core Enterprise Ontologies as Ontology Pattern Languages, since ontology patterns are more and more recognized as an approach that favors ontology reuse. Moreover, we present an initial version of the Enterprise Ontology Pattern Language (E-OPL), and show how it was used for building an enterprise ontology for a specific domain.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the application of foundational ontologies,... more In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the application of foundational ontologies, i.e., formal ontological theories in the philosophical sense, to provide a theoretically sound foundation for improving the theory and practice of conceptual modeling. In this paper, we present advances on our re- search on the ontological foundations of conceptual modeling by addressing the concept of events. We present a foundational ontology of events (termed UFO- B) together with its axiomatization in first-order logic. Moreover, we report on an implementation of UFO-B using the computational logic language Alloy, and discuss its consistency, validation and possible uses.
Ontology design patterns have been pointed out as a promising ap- proach for ontology engineering... more Ontology design patterns have been pointed out as a promising ap- proach for ontology engineering. The goal of this paper is twofold. Firstly, based on well-established works in Software Engineering, we revisit the notion of ontology patterns in Ontology Engineering to introduce the notion of ontolo- gy pattern language as a way to organize related ontology patterns. Secondly, we present an overview of a software process ontology pattern language.
The concept of “service” has been characterized by different disciplines and authors from various... more The concept of “service” has been characterized by different disciplines and authors from various points of view. The variety of characterizations reveals that this notion, although an intuitive one, is far from trivial. Given the importance of services in enterprise computing and Service Science in general, we believe that a clear account of services and service-related concepts is necessary and would serve as a basis for communication, consensus and alignment of various approaches and perspectives. In this paper we propose a commitment-based account of the notion of service captured in a core reference ontology called UFO-S. We address the commitments established between service providers and customers, and show how such commitments affect the service lifecycle. We show that the commitment-based account can serve to harmonize different notions of service in the literature.
There has been a growing interest in Domain-Specific Visual Model- ing Languages (DSVL) and their... more There has been a growing interest in Domain-Specific Visual Model- ing Languages (DSVL) and their support for domain understanding and com- munication. However, the quality of these languages fundamentally depends on how well their structure reflects the structure of the abstractions constituting the underlying domain conceptualization. Since a well-founded domain ontology aims at faithfully representing a domain, it can be seen the ideal input for engi- neering a DSVL. In this paper, we present an experiment that analyses the per- formance of computer students in interpreting instance models by varying the concrete syntax of the language used. We contrast a generic notation (UML- based notation for object diagrams) and a domain specific notation that was de- signed based on a well-founded ontology for the domain of organizational structures. The hypothesis is that the performance of participants in interpreting the models using the domain specific notation is better than those who do it through a generic notation. Performance is evaluated by taking response time and correctness of the answers into account. The results confirm, but also con- tradict the hypothesis initially formulated.
During project planning, knowledge about software processes is useful in several situations: soft... more During project planning, knowledge about software processes is useful in several situations: software processes are defined, activities are scheduled, and people are allocated to these activities. In this context, standard software processes are used as basis for defining project processes, and tools are used to support scheduling, people allocation, and so on. Ideally, people and tools should share a common conceptualization regarding this domain for allowing interoperability, and correct use of the tools. A domain ontology can be used to define an explicit representation of this shared conceptualization. Moreover, for a domain ontology to adequately serve as a reference model, it should be built explicitly taking foundational concepts into account. This paper discusses the reengineering of part of a Software Process Ontology based on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). The part reengineered concerns standard processes, project processes, and activities, which are analyzed at the light of UFO concepts.
Domain engineering aims to support systematic reuse, focusing on modeling common knowledge in a p... more Domain engineering aims to support systematic reuse, focusing on modeling common knowledge in a problem domain. Ontologies have also been pointed as holding great promise for software reuse. In this paper, we present ODE (Ontology-based Domain Engineering), an ontological approach for domain engineering that aims to join ontologies and object-oriented technology.
Abstract. Foundational Ontologies are theoretically well-founded domain- independent systems of ... more Abstract. Foundational Ontologies are theoretically well-founded domain- independent systems of categories that have been successfully used to improve the quality of conceptual modeling languages and models. In this paper, we pre- sent the latest developments in the UFO ontology. Moreover, we elaborate on the relevance of these foundational ontologies in the development of domain ontologies by showing a case study in the software process domain.
This paper presents an ontological analysis of the Software Engineering Metamodel for Development... more This paper presents an ontological analysis of the Software Engineering Metamodel for Development Methodologies (SEMDM), provided by the ISO/IEC 24744 Standard. An ISO initiative intends to use SEMDM as source of an ontology for standards harmonization purposes, and the ontological analysis can help to ensure the required semantics. This analysis is done in the light of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). As result, we present some of the problems identified in SEMDM, as well as alternative model fragments solving them.
The concept of “service” has been characterized by different disciplines and authors from various... more The concept of “service” has been characterized by different disciplines and authors from various points of view. The variety of characterizations reveals that this notion, although an intuitive one, is far from trivial. Given the importance of services in enterprise computing and Service Science in general, we believe that a clear account of services and service-related concepts is necessary and would serve as a basis for communication, consensus and alignment of various approaches and perspectives. In this paper we propose a commitment-based account of the notion of service captured in a core reference ontology called UFO-S. We address the commitments established between service providers and customers, and show how such commitments affect the service lifecycle. We show that the commitment-based account can serve to harmonize different notions of service in the literature.
The rational management of software defects is a fundamental requirement for a mature software in... more The rational management of software defects is a fundamental requirement for a mature software industry. Standards, guides and capability models directly emphasize how important it is for an organization to know and to have a well-established history of failures, errors and defects as they occur in software activities. The problem is that each of these reference models employs its own vocabulary to deal with these phenomena, which can lead to a deficiency in the understanding of these notions by software engineers, potential interoperability problems between supporting tools, and, consequently, to a poorer adoption of these standards and tools in practice. We address this problem of the lack of a consensual conceptualization in this area by proposing a reference conceptual model (domain ontology) of Software Defects, Errors and Failures, which takes into account an ecosystem of software artifacts. The ontology is grounded on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) and is based on well-known standards, guides and capability models. We demonstrate how this approach can suitably promote conceptual clarification and terminological harmonization in this area.
This paper explores the use of " process-related models " – such as Enterprise Architecture (EA) ... more This paper explores the use of " process-related models " – such as Enterprise Architecture (EA) models – as non-ontological resources (NORs) in the Ontology Engineering (OE) trajectory. These models are commonly available in enterprise repositories in process-rich social domains (e.g., e-Government, finance, software engineering, manufacturing), and serve as valuable sources of consolidated knowledge. We focus on the role of EA models in supporting what we are naming here Early Ontology Engineering, comprising the phases of purpose and scope identification as well as the identification of functional requirements for creating domain ontologies. This is because these models characterize, among other aspects, the organizational context and the business motivations/goals. Therefore, they may facilitate the identification of intended uses/purpose of an ontology to be integrated to the EA, as a means to address goals of the organization stakeholders. We show how this approach is being applied in a real-world e-Government project in the Public Security Domain.
— Ontologies play a key role in semantic interoperability projects, capturing the conceptualizati... more — Ontologies play a key role in semantic interoperability projects, capturing the conceptualization underlying the various systems to be integrated. In the case of large information systems landscapes, a single monolithic ontology often becomes hard to design and maintain. In this setting, it is common to divide the ontological model in consistently interlinked modular ontologies, forming an ontology network. This paper explores the role of Enterprise Architecture (EA) models in defining the ontologies in an ontology network. We report on an exploratory study in the scope of an e-Government interoperability project in the area of public security. In the reported study, an EA model provides guidance in the modularization of the ontology network.
Building proper reference ontologies is a hard task. There are a number of methods and tools that... more Building proper reference ontologies is a hard task. There are a number of methods and tools that traditionally have been used to support this task. These include the use of foundational theories, the reuse of domain and core ontologies, the adoption of development methods, as well as the support of proper software tools. In this context, an approach that has gained increasing attention in recent years is the systematic application of ontology patterns. However, a pattern-based approach to ontology engineering requires: the existence of a set of suitable patterns that can be reused in the construction of new ontologies; a proper methodological support for eliciting these patterns, as well as for applying them in the construction of these new models. The goal of this paper is twofold: (i) firstly, we present an approach for deriving conceptual ontology patterns from ontologies. These patterns are derived from ontologies of different generality levels, ranging from foundational to domain ontologies; (ii) secondly, we present guidelines that describe how these patterns can be applied in combination for building reference domain ontologies in a reuse-oriented process. In summary, this paper is about the construction of ontology patterns from on-tologies, as well as the construction of ontologies from ontology patterns.
Ontology design patterns are a promising approach for Ontology Engineering. In this chapter, we i... more Ontology design patterns are a promising approach for Ontology Engineering. In this chapter, we introduce the notion of Ontology Pattern Language (OPL) as a way to organize domain-related ontology patterns. This chapter is organized as follows: Section 7.1 presents the motivation for organizing Domain-Related
Proceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing - SAC '15, 2015
Many efforts have been made for modeling and standardizing software processes. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7, ... more Many efforts have been made for modeling and standardizing software processes. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7, the ISO sub-committee responsible for software and systems engineering, is one of the most important groups devoted to this task. However, standards developed by this committee are frequently inconsistent and even contradictory. This led to the need for an ISO Study Group to investigate the creation of an ontological infrastructure to establish a common conceptualization for underpinning all SC7 standards. This ISO initiative is a work in progress, which has focused on the software process domain and, in particular, considering the ISO/IEC 24744 standard. In this paper, we advocate in favor of using an Ontology Pattern Language (OPL) as the main component of this ontological infrastructure. We present ISP-OPL (ISO-based Software Process OPL), an OPL that can be applied as a basis for harmonizing software process-related standards, favoring reuse when building aligned specific software process ontologies for SE sub-domains. In order to illustrate its application, we also present an ontology about the Requirements Engineering process, developed by using ISP-OPL.
The use of Requirements at Runtime (RRT) is an emerging research area. Many methodologies and fra... more The use of Requirements at Runtime (RRT) is an emerging research area. Many methodologies and frameworks that make use of requirements models during the execution of software can be found in the literature, but very few of them use ontologies to ground the models that are used at runtime. In this paper, we introduce the Runtime Requirements Ontology (RRO), a domain ontology that intends to represent the nature and context of RRT. Following a well-known Ontology Engineering method, we evaluate RRO using verification and validation techniques.
Software reuse is pointed as a key factor for quality and productivity improvement. Ideally, reus... more Software reuse is pointed as a key factor for quality and productivity improvement. Ideally, reuse should occur in all levels of abstraction, but higher levels of abstraction tend to lead to major benefits. In this paper, we present a Reuse-based Requirements Engineering process that focus on reusing ontologies and analysis patterns. Reports about its application are also discussed.
Resumo. Avaliação é parte essencial de diversos processos de software, tais como Garantia da Qual... more Resumo. Avaliação é parte essencial de diversos processos de software, tais como Garantia da Qualidade e Avaliação e Melhoria de Processos. A avaliação de entidades nesse contexto é bastante corriqueira, sendo aplicada, dentre outros, a processos, produtos e recursos. Ainda que a avaliação de cada um desses tipos de entidades tenha suas particularidades, há aspectos comuns que, se propriamente capturados,
Enterprise ontologies are useful for many purposes. Over the years, there have been a number of e... more Enterprise ontologies are useful for many purposes. Over the years, there have been a number of efforts aiming at building them. However, due to the complexity of the enterprise domain, enterprise ontologies tend to be complex and difficult to reuse. In this paper, we advocate in favor of organizing Core Enterprise Ontologies as Ontology Pattern Languages, since ontology patterns are more and more recognized as an approach that favors ontology reuse. Moreover, we present an initial version of the Enterprise Ontology Pattern Language (E-OPL), and show how it was used for building an enterprise ontology for a specific domain.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the application of foundational ontologies,... more In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the application of foundational ontologies, i.e., formal ontological theories in the philosophical sense, to provide a theoretically sound foundation for improving the theory and practice of conceptual modeling. In this paper, we present advances on our re- search on the ontological foundations of conceptual modeling by addressing the concept of events. We present a foundational ontology of events (termed UFO- B) together with its axiomatization in first-order logic. Moreover, we report on an implementation of UFO-B using the computational logic language Alloy, and discuss its consistency, validation and possible uses.
Ontology design patterns have been pointed out as a promising ap- proach for ontology engineering... more Ontology design patterns have been pointed out as a promising ap- proach for ontology engineering. The goal of this paper is twofold. Firstly, based on well-established works in Software Engineering, we revisit the notion of ontology patterns in Ontology Engineering to introduce the notion of ontolo- gy pattern language as a way to organize related ontology patterns. Secondly, we present an overview of a software process ontology pattern language.
The concept of “service” has been characterized by different disciplines and authors from various... more The concept of “service” has been characterized by different disciplines and authors from various points of view. The variety of characterizations reveals that this notion, although an intuitive one, is far from trivial. Given the importance of services in enterprise computing and Service Science in general, we believe that a clear account of services and service-related concepts is necessary and would serve as a basis for communication, consensus and alignment of various approaches and perspectives. In this paper we propose a commitment-based account of the notion of service captured in a core reference ontology called UFO-S. We address the commitments established between service providers and customers, and show how such commitments affect the service lifecycle. We show that the commitment-based account can serve to harmonize different notions of service in the literature.
There has been a growing interest in Domain-Specific Visual Model- ing Languages (DSVL) and their... more There has been a growing interest in Domain-Specific Visual Model- ing Languages (DSVL) and their support for domain understanding and com- munication. However, the quality of these languages fundamentally depends on how well their structure reflects the structure of the abstractions constituting the underlying domain conceptualization. Since a well-founded domain ontology aims at faithfully representing a domain, it can be seen the ideal input for engi- neering a DSVL. In this paper, we present an experiment that analyses the per- formance of computer students in interpreting instance models by varying the concrete syntax of the language used. We contrast a generic notation (UML- based notation for object diagrams) and a domain specific notation that was de- signed based on a well-founded ontology for the domain of organizational structures. The hypothesis is that the performance of participants in interpreting the models using the domain specific notation is better than those who do it through a generic notation. Performance is evaluated by taking response time and correctness of the answers into account. The results confirm, but also con- tradict the hypothesis initially formulated.
During project planning, knowledge about software processes is useful in several situations: soft... more During project planning, knowledge about software processes is useful in several situations: software processes are defined, activities are scheduled, and people are allocated to these activities. In this context, standard software processes are used as basis for defining project processes, and tools are used to support scheduling, people allocation, and so on. Ideally, people and tools should share a common conceptualization regarding this domain for allowing interoperability, and correct use of the tools. A domain ontology can be used to define an explicit representation of this shared conceptualization. Moreover, for a domain ontology to adequately serve as a reference model, it should be built explicitly taking foundational concepts into account. This paper discusses the reengineering of part of a Software Process Ontology based on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). The part reengineered concerns standard processes, project processes, and activities, which are analyzed at the light of UFO concepts.
Domain engineering aims to support systematic reuse, focusing on modeling common knowledge in a p... more Domain engineering aims to support systematic reuse, focusing on modeling common knowledge in a problem domain. Ontologies have also been pointed as holding great promise for software reuse. In this paper, we present ODE (Ontology-based Domain Engineering), an ontological approach for domain engineering that aims to join ontologies and object-oriented technology.
Abstract. Foundational Ontologies are theoretically well-founded domain- independent systems of ... more Abstract. Foundational Ontologies are theoretically well-founded domain- independent systems of categories that have been successfully used to improve the quality of conceptual modeling languages and models. In this paper, we pre- sent the latest developments in the UFO ontology. Moreover, we elaborate on the relevance of these foundational ontologies in the development of domain ontologies by showing a case study in the software process domain.
This paper presents an ontological analysis of the Software Engineering Metamodel for Development... more This paper presents an ontological analysis of the Software Engineering Metamodel for Development Methodologies (SEMDM), provided by the ISO/IEC 24744 Standard. An ISO initiative intends to use SEMDM as source of an ontology for standards harmonization purposes, and the ontological analysis can help to ensure the required semantics. This analysis is done in the light of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). As result, we present some of the problems identified in SEMDM, as well as alternative model fragments solving them.
The concept of “service” has been characterized by different disciplines and authors from various... more The concept of “service” has been characterized by different disciplines and authors from various points of view. The variety of characterizations reveals that this notion, although an intuitive one, is far from trivial. Given the importance of services in enterprise computing and Service Science in general, we believe that a clear account of services and service-related concepts is necessary and would serve as a basis for communication, consensus and alignment of various approaches and perspectives. In this paper we propose a commitment-based account of the notion of service captured in a core reference ontology called UFO-S. We address the commitments established between service providers and customers, and show how such commitments affect the service lifecycle. We show that the commitment-based account can serve to harmonize different notions of service in the literature.
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Papers by Ricardo Falbo