The Object Management Group Ontology Definition Metamodel

Report of a submission being made to a major international software engineering standards group, the Object Management Group which ties together OMG standards with World-Wide Web Consortium and International Standards Organization standards. Major industry bodies including IBM are collaborating, and the submission has the support of 24 companies. OMG, W3C and ISO standards strongly influence the industry, especially in combination. Colomb was a major contributor, responsible for 30% of the submission, and the primary author of the paper

OntoMaven: Maven-based Ontology Development and Management of Distributed Ontology Repositories

In collaborative agile ontology development projects support for modular reuse of ontologies from large existing remote repositories, ontology project life cycle management, and transitive dependency management are important needs. The Apache Maven approach has proven its success in distributed collaborative Software Engineering by its widespread adoption. The contribution of this paper is a new design artifact called OntoMaven. OntoMaven adopts the Maven-based development methodology and adapts its concepts to knowledge engineering for Maven-based ontology development and management of ontology artifacts in distributed ontology repositories.Comment: Pre-print submission to 9th International Workshop on Semantic Web Enabled Software Engineering (SWESE2013). Berlin, Germany, December 2-5, 201

Model-Driven Semantic Web Rule Engineering

The tutorial was given at the Conference Center of Fairmount Spring Hotel in Banff on the 10th of May, 2007 and the tutorial was scheduled for the main conference program. We approximately had 60 participants. The overall impressions of all participants were very positive about the quality of the tutorial and the information presented. Many participants stressed that they especially like how we combined three different areas (i.e., MDE, Semantic Web, and service-oriented architectures) in a very consistent and informative way, so that they were able to grasp a completely-new perspective on how these area could be combined and practically used. Our approach was especially appreciated by participants coming from industrial settings, who like the way we tried to combine novel and not widely adopted Semantic Web technologies with well-known software engineering techniques. However, our impression was that the next editions of the tutorial to be submitted to other conferences could slightly be updated, so that we can put less emphasis on the fundamental technologies (e.g., ontologies and metamodeling) and more focus on semantic service-oriented architectures and Web applications. This is due to the fact that tutorials should always have strong analysis on how some novel technologies can be transferred to industrial setting. Of course, this also depends on the conference where we are going to present the tutorial, since different research communities have different background knowledge, and thus they need more emphasis on different background knowledge, which decreases the time we can spend on advance applications. Moreover, even the audience from the same community does not have the same background knowledge and tutorial presenters should always make some trade-offs. Our plan is to revise the tutorial accordingly and submit it to other conferences such as International Semantic Web Conference and International Conference on Software Engineering. In addition to new tutorial editions, we also plan to write a paper that will be covering the tutorial subject. That paper will be submitted to an international journal such as ACM Computing Surveys and Knowledge Engineering Reviews or as a book chapter to an edited book. We hope that this paper will not only be a suitable lecture note, but it could be a relevant visionary paper for the future development of this area of integration of Semantic Web technologies into software development process. I am also happy to report that Dr. Marco Brambilla of Politecnico di Milano, who is a member of the well-known WebML research group and leading Web engineering company (WebRatio), expressed his wish to collaborate with us in the future tutorial editions and the work on the future papers covering the tutorial subject. On the grounds of the subject of this tutorial, I have already submitted a project proposal in collaboration with Prof. Marek Hatala and TELUS Communications for a NSERC strategic project grant in April 2007. This project proposal is also fully coordinated with the European consortia led by Prof. Gerd Wagner that also submitted a project proposal to EU commission for a grant within Framework Program 7. In addition, Dr. Brambilla is also very enthusiastic about setting up similar research collaboration in the future, and we made a plan on how to collaborate by trying to get involve our students to work on the subjects that are looking at the intersections of our research areas. At the conference, I had a contact with Mr. Ralf Gerstner of Springer who was the editor of the research monograph “Model-Driven Architecture and Ontology Development” where I was the led author. He invited me to write another book that will be covering the subject of this tutorial, as he was very positive about the high interest of the audience, rising importance of the subject and the feedback we got form the audience at the WWW2007. Our plan is that we should first proceed with the above-mentioned paper and also produce some more research experiments with the technology till the end of this year, and then prepare a book proposal in early 2008. My personal plan is to try to develop a new computer science course at Athabasca University that will cover the subject of this tutorial as well as to revise some of the existing ones (e.g., COMP 603 and COMP 610) that can benefit from the expertise in this area. I anticipate that the experience obtained at the WWW2007 conference will be used as a very good input for increasing the quality of that new course and potentially increase competitiveness of Athabasca University’s courses by offering challenging research subjects that are attracting a high attention of industry and which we explore collaboratively with world leading researchers. Thanks to the research reputation and presentation experience in the area covered in the tutorial, I am invited to give 3 technology lectures (2 hours altogether) at the 2nd Summer School on Generative Transformational Technologies in Software Engineering (GTTSE 2007) in Braga, Portugal from July 1st till July 7, 2007. Given that this event attracts the most renowned researchers giving talks (which will be excellent opportunity to share research experience, disseminate our research results, and collaborate with well-known researchers) and encouraged with the positive experience from WWW2007, I plan to apply for another A&PDF award to support my attendance at GTTSE 2007.Model Driven Engineering (MDE) and the Semantic Web represent two key technologies with a far-reaching vision for the future of software engineering and Web engineering. the main promise of MDE is to raise the level of abstraction from technology-platform-specific concepts to the higher levels of platform-independence and "computation-independent" modeling. The Semantic Web vision starts from another perspective: sharing data, resources and knowledge between parties that belong to different organizations, different cultures and/or different communities. Ontologies and rule play the main role in the Semantic Web for publishing community vocabularies and policies, for annotating resources and for turning Web applications into inference-enabled collaboration platforms. Although these two technology visions have been developed by two different communities, they share number of principles and goals, and there are important synergies that can be achie3ved by combining them with each other. The ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM) standard (http://ontology.omg.org) by the OMG can be viewed as a first step towards bridging MDE and the Semantic Web. Another important building block is domain-specific modeling languages suitable for describing specific domains. MDE provides a set of principles and techniques how to create domain-specific modeling languages by using metamodeling, how to transform from one type of modeling language to another, and how to change level of abstractions (e.g., from platform-specific to platform-independent and back). The most well-known initiatives in this areas are the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) by the OMG and the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF). The main goal of this tutorial is to give an introduction into state-of-the-art Web engineering methods based on the principles, models, and technologies of both MDE and the Semantic Web. The tutorial starts from the basics of the Semantic Web and MDE (e.g., ontology languages, modeling languages, mode transformations), and then explores how they can be employed in various states of Web engineering by addressing the following questions: 1) How can we develop ontologies and rules with MDE-based approaches and standards?, 2) How can we develop Semantic Web services that follow MDE recommendations?, 3) How we can build next generation Web applications that are taking advantage of both Semantic Web and MDE?Academic & Professional Development Fund (A&PDF

Ontology-based modelling of architectural styles

The conceptual modelling of software architectures is of central importance for the quality of a software system. A rich modelling language is required to integrate the different aspects of architecture modelling, such as architectural styles, structural and behavioural modelling, into a coherent framework. Architectural styles are often neglected in software architectures. We propose an ontological approach for architectural style modelling based on description logic as an abstract, meta-level modelling instrument. We introduce a framework for style definition and style combination. The application of the ontological framework in the form of an integration into existing architectural description notations is illustrated

An Ontology-Driven Sociomedical Web 3.0 Framework

Web 3.0, the web of social and semantic cooperation, calls for a methodological multidisciplinary architecture in order to reach its mainstream objectives. With the lack of such an architecture and the reliance of existing efforts on lightweight semantics and RDF graphs, this thesis proposes "Web3.OWL", an ontology-driven framework towards a Web 3.0 knowledge architecture. Meanwhile, the online social parenting data and their corresponding websites users known as "mommy bloggers" undergo one of the fastest online demographics growth, and the available literature reflects the very little attention this growth has so far been given and the various deficiencies the parenting domain suffers from; these deficiencies all fall under the umbrella of the scarcity of parenting sociomedical analysis and decision-support systems. The Web3.OWL framework puts forward an approach that relies on the Meta-Object Facility for Semantics standard (SMOF) for the management of its modeled OWL (Web Ontology Language) expressive domain ontologies on the one hand, and the coordination of its various underlined Web 3.0 prerequisite disciplines on the other. Setting off with a holistic portrayal of Web3.OWL’s components and workflow, the thesis progresses into a more analytic exploration of its main paradigms. Out of its different ontology-aware paradigms are notably highlighted both its methodology for expressiveness handling through modularization and projection techniques and algorithms, and its facilities for tagging inference, suggestion and processing. Web3.OWL, albeit generic by conception, proves its efficiency in solving the deficiencies and meeting the requirements of the sociomedical domain of interest. Its conceived ontology for parenting analysis and surveillance, baptised "ParOnt", strongly contributes to the backbone metamodel and the various constituents of this ontology-driven framework. Accordingly, as the workflow revolves around Description Logics principles, OWL 2 profiles along with standard and beyond-standard reasoning techniques, conducted experiments and competency questions are illustrated, thus establishing the required Web 3.0 outcomes. The empirical results of the diverse preliminary decision-support and recommendation services targeting parenting public awareness, orientation and education do ascertain, in conclusion, the value and potentials of the proposed conceptual framework

Towards Sharing Rules Between OWL/SWRL and UML/OCL

The paper presents a metamodel-driven model transformation approach to interchanging rules between the Semantic Web Rule Language along with the Web Ontology Language (OWL/SWRL) and Object Constraint Language (OCL) along with UML (UML/OCL). The solution is based on the REWERSE Rule Markup Language (R2ML), a MOF-defined general rule language, as a pivotal metamodel and the bidirectional transformations between OWL/SWRL and R2ML and between UML/OCL and R2ML. Besides describing mapping rules between three rule languages, the paper proposes the implementation by using ATLAS Transformation language (ATL) and describes the whole transformation process involving several MOF-based metamodels, XML schemas, EBNF grammars

Verification of knowledge shared across design and manufacture using a foundation ontology

Seamless computer-based knowledge sharing between departments of a manufacturing enterprise is useful in preventing unnecessary design revisions. A lack of interoperability between independently developed knowledge bases, however, is a major impediment in the development of a seamless knowledge sharing system. Interoperability, being an ability to overcome semantic and syntactic differences during computer-based knowledge sharing can be enhanced through the use of ontologies. Ontologies in computer science terms are hierarchical structures of knowledge stored in a computer-based knowledge base. Ontologies have been accepted by all as an interoperable medium to provide a non-subjective way of storing and sharing knowledge across diverse domains. Some semantic and syntactic differences, however, still crop up when these ontological knowledge bases are developed independently. A case study in an aerospace components manufacturing company suggests that shape features of a component are perceived differently by the designing and manufacturing departments. These differences cause further misunderstanding and misinterpretation when computer-based knowledge sharing systems are used across the two domains. Foundation or core ontologies can be used to overcome these differences and to ensure a seamless sharing of knowledge. This is because these ontologies provide a common grounding for domain ontologies to be used by individual domains or department. This common grounding can be used by the mediation and knowledge verification systems to authenticate the meaning of knowledge understood across different domains. For this reason, this research proposes a knowledge verification framework for developing a system capable of verifying knowledge between those domain ontologies which are developed out of a common core or foundation ontology. This framework makes use of ontology logic to standardize the way concepts from a foundation and core-concepts ontology are used in domain ontologies and then by using the same principles the knowledge being shared is verified. The Knowledge Frame Language which is based on Common Logic is used for formalizing example ontologies. The ontology editor used for browsing and querying ontologies is the Integrated Ontology Development Environment (IODE) by Highfleet Inc. An ontological product modelling technique is also developed in this research, to test the proposed framework in the scenario of manufacturability analysis. The proposed framework is then validated through a Java API specially developed for this purpose. Real industrial examples experienced during the case study are used for validation