Applied Ontology

Conceptual modeling languages are purposeful artifacts, hence their design should also start from the purpose that they serve. Such purposeful design addresses the requirements engineering concern of a language specification being aligned with the goals of its users. Thereby relevance of the language is ensured, instead of developing a language for language’s sake. We posit that this addresses some known issues that are due to a misalignment between a language’s specification and the goals of its intended users.

In this paper, we introduce vGREL, a goal- and value-oriented approach for purposeful language development. vGREL helps language engineers to start the design of conceptual modeling languages with requirements engineering exercises. To this end vGREL provides (1) a purpose driven requirements engineering process for language design; (2) a value profile for the Goal-oriented Requirements Language (GRL) to enable analysis and reasoning during the process and capture its results; and leverages (3) the software tool support of GRL for decision making during language design. To illustrate vGREL, we apply it to a case study on responsibility-based access rights management. Furthermore, we present reflections on vGREL from the language engineer involved in the case study.

The presented paper proposes a state machine of REA (Resource–Event–Agent) model. This model constitutes a fundamental building block for value modeling applications. Contrary to other approaches to this issue, the paper proposes the state machine “inside” the REA model utilizing the DEMO (Design & Engineering Methodology for Organizations) generic approach and its other features. This means that the states of the REA model itself are taken into consideration. One of the advantages of DEMO is its perception of an enterprise as a social system, of which the elements are human subjects that are in their roles of social individuals. It is obvious that human subjects have appropriate authority and bear the corresponding responsibility. From a wider perspective, the REA model can be considered a social system because the fundamental elements of the model are human subjects (economic agents). For this reason, the REA model and its relationships can be viewed from the DEMO transaction pattern perspective despite possible differences in modeling. The core relationships of the REA model acquire a new meaning and bearing. The result of this approach is the introduction of a clear and unambiguous state machine. This approach inherently integrates the current, past and future event into one structure (transaction) and simplifies the traditional REA distinction between current and past events and future events modeled by commitments. The paper also analyzes the phases of a business transaction to prove that the proposed solution is in compliance with the business transaction declaration.

Dynamic, networked service-oriented systems, like those found in manufacturing, logistics or transportation, require efficient communication of capabilities of their services to enable on-the-fly integrations as a result of changing requirements. Previously, in a case of a manufacturing services network, we have shown the manufacturing service capability (MSC) information communication can be enhanced by introducing a reference MSC ontology – a formal, OWL DL domain-specific ontology. However, consistent and quality development of reference ontology for a large and evolving domain such as manufacturing is a challenge. Therefore, we propose to utilize the notion of OWL ontology design patterns (ODPs) to develop such reference ontology. However, despite the existence of rich design patterns for information modeling in general, there has been no documentation detailing the principles for development of domain-specific ODPs for domain-specific semantic models. This survey paper fills this void by providing a survey and systematic synthesis of applicable principles for domain-specific ODP development in an investigation of the prior works in data modeling, object-oriented software analysis and ontology modeling design patterns. The paper discusses applicability of the revealed principles in regards to requirements of MSC domain-specific ODPs. Although the paper is concerned with the MSC domain, the findings apply to any domain-specific ODP development. Further research is identified to operationalize principles towards domain-specific ODP development.