An ontology pattern language for service modeling

In this paper we partially present an initial version of an Ontology Pattern Language, called S-OPL, describing the core conceptualization of ser- vices as a network of interconnected ontology modeling patterns. S-OPL builds on a commitment-based core ontology for services (UFO-S) and has been de- veloped to support the engineering of ontologies involving services in different domains. S-OPL patterns address problems related to the distinction of general kinds of customers and providers, service offering, service negotiation and ser- vice delivery. In this paper, we focus on the first two. The use of S-OPL is demonstrated in a real case study in the domain of Information and Communi- cation Technology services.

The concept of “service” has been characterized in different disciplines and by different authors from various points of view. This variety of characterizations has emerged because although this notion seems intuitive, it is far from trivial, with many interrelated perspectives. Given their importance in enterprise computing and Service Science in general, we believe that a clear account of services and s ervice-related concepts is necessary and would serve as a basis for communication, consensus and alignment among 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. Moreover, we show that the commitment-based account can serve to harmonize different notions of service in the literature.

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.

2018 International Conference on Information Technology Systems and Innovation (ICITSI), 2018

As a term for characterizing a process of devising a service system, the term 'service engineering' is still regarded as an 'open' research challenge due to unspecified details and conflicting perspectives. This paper presents consolidated service engineering ontologies in collecting, specifying and defining relationship between components pertinent within the context of service engineering. The ontologies are built by way of literature surveys from the collected conceptual works by collating various concepts into an integrated ontology. Two ontologies are produced: general service ontology and software service ontology. The software-service ontology is drawn from the informatics domain, while the generalized ontology of a service system is built from both a business management and the information system perspective. The produced ontologies are verified by exercising conceptual operationalizations of the ontologies in adopting several service orientation features and service system patterns. The proposed ontologies are demonstrated to be sufficient to serve as a basis for a service engineering framework.

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.

… Asia Journal of the Association for …, 2010

2014 IEEE 18th International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference, 2014

ArchiMate is a widely-adopted enterprise architecture language based on the "service orientation" paradigm. Al though its support for service orientation has had great impact in the representation of (service-oriented) enterprise architectures in the last 10 years, the representation of services in ArchiMate is not without problems. In particular, the predominance of the perspective of service as "unit of functionality" hides some important social aspects inherent to service relations and makes some of the models that the language produces ambiguous. In order to address some of these issues, in this paper we discuss an ontological analysis of service modeling fragments of ArchiMate's Business layer. This analysis is based on UFO-S , a reference ontology that characterizes the notion of service by applying the concepts of commitments and claims and harmonizing several views of services from a broad perspective. We contribute to: (i) providing real-world semantics to service modeling fragments in ArchiMate based on the notion of service commitments/claims; and (ii) offering recommendations in the form of modeling patterns to ensure expressiveness and to clarify the semantics of service elements.

2008

The survey of related work on ontological studies in the IT services domain, allowed us to identify some serious limitations on the current state-of-the-art across a set of six maturity dimensions. To mitigate that shortcoming this paper proposes a formal ontology for IT services. To grant preciseness to this ontology we have expressed well-formedness rules with the OCL constraint language. The proposed ontology is then instantiated to illustrate its validity in addressing realistic examples.

This paper presents a diagnosis of mainstream service modeling languages (SoaML, USDL, and ArchiMate) in light of UFO-S, a reference ontology for services. UFO-S is intended as a broad ontology for service phenomena, harmonizing different perspectives on services (e.g., "service as commitment", and "service as capability"), and addressing several phases of the service lifecycle (service offering, service agreement, and service delivery). As result, UFO-S is used as an "analysis theory" to identify choices in these languages concerning their focus and coverage of service phenomena. We identify a number of possible improvements concerning the representation of service participant (roles), the description of service offerings, service agreements and service delivery.

Interface, 2006

The potential to achieve dynamic, scalable and cost-effective infrastructure for electronic transactions in business and public administration has driven recent research efforts towards so-called Semantic Web services, that is enriching Web services with machine-processable semantics. Supporting this goal, the Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO) provides a conceptual framework and a formal language for semantically describing all relevant aspects of Web services in order to facilitate the automation of ...