Using objects and patterns to implement domain ontologies

Abstract

Ontologies are becoming an important mechanism to build information systems. Nevertheless, there is still no systematic approach to support the design of such systems using tools that are common to information systems developers. In this paper, we propose an approach for deriving object frameworks from domain ontologies and then we show the application of this approach in the software process domain.

An Introduction to Ontologies and Ontology Engineering

“…Some researchers propose a mathematical model for UML (see for instance Breu et al 1997). The work of Guizzardi (Guizzardi et al 2002(Guizzardi et al , 2004 concerns the development of different methodological tools (UML profiles, design patterns) in order to build an ontology using UML formally and correctly. Cranefiel and Purvis show how a formal ontology can be built using UML and Object Constraint Language (OCL) (OMG 2006); the concepts are described by UML classes and constraints on concepts are described in OCL (Cranefield et al 1999).…”

Supporting ontology development with ODEd

“…These ontologies are used to guide the second stage of the requirement analysis, when the particularities of a specific application are considered. This way, the same ontology can be used to guide the development of several applications [14]. In other words, ontologies can be used as basis for a domain engineering approach.…”

“…For this purpose, a hybrid approach based on pure first-order logic, relational theory and, predominantly, set theory was proposed in [14]. So, the first step is to perform the complete axiomatization of the domain ontology using this set-based formalism.…”

Towards semantic software engineering environments

“…Based on an ontology, domain infrastructures can be developed. Since we are most interested in the object technology, we have applyed an approach for deriving object frameworks from domain ontologies described in [6]. In this way, we can develop object-based domain infrastructures derived from the ontologies.…”

“…ODE's process kernel was built based on a software process ontology [6]. Tools for process definition and project tracking were also built based on this ontology.…”