Ontologies and Software Engineering

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This article is about using ontologies to identify the objects from a problem domain text description. At the center of object models and ontologies are objects within a given problem domain is similar to the concept provided by ontologies. This paper addresses ontologies as a basis of a methodology for object modeling, including available tools, particularly OntoExtract, which can help the conversion process. This paper describes how the developers can implement this methodology on the base of an illustrative example.

An ontology, in more generally and well known definition, is a specification of conceptualization. Ontologies described syntactically on the basis of languages such as eXtensible Markup Language (XML), XML Schema, Resource Description Framework (RDF), and RDF Schema (RDFS). The object oriented paradigm is the framework in software engineering, influencing all effort in information science. Discovering the right objects seems to be the most difficult task in the whole development process.

Object oriented software development is well supported by numbers of working methods, techniques, and tools, except for this starting point – object identification and building the related system object model. Converting the text description of system problem domain and respective functional requirement specifications into an object model is usually left to the intuition and experience of developers (system analysts). Recently there has been great research interest in applying ontologies for solving “language ambiguity problem” as either an ontology- driven or ontology-based approach. This is true for object oriented software engineering, mainly because of the similarity in the principles of the two paradigms. Moreover, the object systems similar to ontologies, which represent conceptualized analysis of a given domain, can be easily reused for different applications . An ontology is a specification of a representational vocabulary for a shared domain of discourse: definitions of classes, relations, functions, and other objects or, more generally, a specification of conceptualization . Semantic web uses ontologies as a tool for easy integration and usage of content by building a semi-structured data model. To solve the problem of heterogeneity in developing software applications, there is a need for specific descriptions of all kinds of concepts, for example, classes (general things), and the relationships that can exist among them, and their properties (or attributes).

The proposed methodology described in this paper, is based on five submodels, only two namely the text description model (T-model) and class (object) model (C- model), are included in the classical object oriented software development process. The others model used represent specific analysis work, which the developers should do, to get benefit from using ontologies for identification of objects. The basic idea is to ensure suitable transformation of the models from one to another using respective procedure and tools. This paper is structured as follows: section 2 is dedicated to a more detailed description of the models as well as to discussion on the techniques and tools, which can be practically used for model transformation. An illustrative example of a part of the information system for the domain of academic management is used throughout the paper to support the explanations; finally, section 3 summarizes the proposed methodology.

About the Author: university the Thai Chamber of Commerce (UTCC) Dindeang, Bangkok, Thailand

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