Ontology-driven conceptual modeling: A'systematic literature mapping and review

All rights reserved. Ontology-driven conceptual modeling (ODCM) is still a relatively new research domain in the field of information systems and there is still much discussion on how the research in ODCM should be performed and what the focus of this research should be. Therefore, this article aims to critically survey the existing literature in order to assess the kind of research that has been performed over the years, analyze the nature of the research contributions and establish its current state of the art by positioning, evaluating and interpreting relevant research to date that is related to ODCM. To understand and identify any gaps and research opportunities, our literature study is composed of both a systematic mapping study and a systematic review study. The mapping study aims at structuring and classifying the area that is being investigated in order to give a general overview of the research that has been performed in the field. A review study on the other hand is a more thorough and rigorous inquiry and provides recommendations based on the strength of the found evidence. Our results indicate that there are several research gaps that should be addressed and we further composed several research opportunities that are possible areas for future research

Enhancing the Process Specification for Systematic Literature Reviews

SLR (Systematic Literature Review) is a research methodology intended to obtain evidence from scientific articles stored in digital repositories. It must be systematic, repeatable and auditable to formulate research questions about a thematic area or phenomenon of interest and to search, select, analyze and communicate all basic or applied research relevant findings in order to answer those questions. SLR can be carried out on primary or secondary studies. In both cases, well-established processes and methods are required. Although there are guides to the SLR process in Software Engineering, which indicate the steps to be followed in the three phases of the process proposed by Kitchenham, we considered that would be a contribution for the research community the strengthening of its current process specification. For this goal, we document the SLR process specification using mainly the SPEM (Software & Systems Process Engineering Metamodel) language and process modeling perspectives. As long as we develop the present work, we exemplify process aspects using a pilot SLR on software testing ontologies already performed.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Enhancing the Process Specification for Systematic Literature Reviews

SLR (Systematic Literature Review) is a research methodology intended to obtain evidence from scientific articles stored in digital repositories. It must be systematic, repeatable and auditable to formulate research questions about a thematic area or phenomenon of interest and to search, select, analyze and communicate all basic or applied research relevant findings in order to answer those questions. SLR can be carried out on primary or secondary studies. In both cases, well-established processes and methods are required. Although there are guides to the SLR process in Software Engineering, which indicate the steps to be followed in the three phases of the process proposed by Kitchenham, we considered that would be a contribution for the research community the strengthening of its current process specification. For this goal, we document the SLR process specification using mainly the SPEM (Software & Systems Process Engineering Metamodel) language and process modeling perspectives. As long as we develop the present work, we exemplify process aspects using a pilot SLR on software testing ontologies already performed.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

A Systematic Literature Review of The Role of Ontology in Modeling Knowledge in Software Development Processes

Ontologies in software development are explained as showing the properties of a subject area and how they are related to each other by defining a set of concepts and categories that represent the subject. It is used to determine the ambiguity in the software requirements specification. Although claimed to be beneficial, the software development communities are still unfamiliar with the role of Ontology in modeling knowledge in software development processes. Moreover, not much has been known about the role of Ontology in software engineering processes. Our goal is to map and explain the evidence about the role of Ontology in Modelling Knowledge and the challenge faced by the software engineering team to understand how far ontology can help them determine the ambiguity in modeling and software development processes. We conducted a systematic review of the literature published between 2012 and 2021 and identified 150 papers that discuss the role of ontology in modeling knowledge in software development processes. We formulated and applied specific inclusion and exclusion criteria in two rounds to determine the most relevant studies for our research goal. The review identified 22 practices that explain ontologies' primary role in software development processes. However, our findings suggest ontology's role in software engineering as a research context needs additional attention. A more empirical result is required to understand better the role of ontology in modeling knowledge in software development with non-functional requirements and self-organizing teams

Literature Reviews in IS Research: What Can Be Learnt from the Past and Other Fields?

Literature reviews (LRs) are recognized for their increasing impact in the information systems literature. Methodologists have drawn attention to the question of how we can leverage the value of LRs to preserve and generate knowledge. The panelists who participated in the discussion of “Standalone Literature Reviews in IS Research: What Can Be Learnt from the Past and Other Fields?” at ICIS 2016 in Dublin acknowledged this significant issue and debated 1) what the IS field can learn from other fields and where IS-specific challenges occur, 2) how the IS field should move forward to foster the genre of LRs, and 3) the best practices to train doctoral IS students in publishing LRs. This paper reports the key takeaways of this panel discussion. We provide guidance for IS scholars on how to conduct LRs that contribute to the cumulative knowledge development in and across the IS field to best prepare the next generation of IS scholars

An ontology for specifying and tracing requirements engineering artifacts and Test Artifacts

Nowadays, modern software development processes follow an iterative approach, which makes possible to start the testing of a system at early stages. This approach requires recording the requirements artifacts that specify the functionality or characteristics required by the system, and the test cases that are derived from each requirement artifact. Frequently, software development organizations employ supporting tools to create and maintain these artifacts. There exist numerous tools for supporting requirements specification activities, as well as the definition and execution of test cases. These separate tools have their own databases and metamodels. The lack of integration between these tools leads to difficulties in tracing related artifacts and obtaining useful knowledge to manage the developing process. It is necessary to understand without ambiguities the concepts used by the different tools to allow them to interoperate. This paper proposes an ontology that defines and integrates the concepts included by the metamodels of different Requirements Engineering and Testing Management supporting tools. The formalization of these concepts and their relationships in an ontology language prevents ambiguity of the concepts and permit to the tools involved to interoperate with each other, to achieve semantic consistency and the tracing of artifacts. The proposed ontology used in conjunction with a reasoner provides capabilities to infer traces that are not explicit, which makes it possible to easily maintain artifacts and associations between them. The approach facilitates backward tracing from test cases to use cases and functional requirements artifacts, obtain knowledge about the causes of a defect or a poor specification, and enable impact analysis.Fil: Roldán, María Luciana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo y Diseño. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo y Diseño; ArgentinaFil: Vegetti, Maria Marcela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo y Diseño. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo y Diseño; ArgentinaFil: Gonnet, Silvio Miguel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo y Diseño. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo y Diseño; ArgentinaFil: Marciszack, Marcelo Martín. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional Córdoba; ArgentinaFil: Leone, Horacio Pascual. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo y Diseño. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo y Diseño; Argentin

Engineering Blockchain Based Software Systems: Foundations, Survey, and Future Directions

Many scientific and practical areas have shown increasing interest in reaping the benefits of blockchain technology to empower software systems. However, the unique characteristics and requirements associated with Blockchain Based Software (BBS) systems raise new challenges across the development lifecycle that entail an extensive improvement of conventional software engineering. This article presents a systematic literature review of the state-of-the-art in BBS engineering research from a software engineering perspective. We characterize BBS engineering from the theoretical foundations, processes, models, and roles and discuss a rich repertoire of key development activities, principles, challenges, and techniques. The focus and depth of this survey not only gives software engineering practitioners and researchers a consolidated body of knowledge about current BBS development but also underpins a starting point for further research in this field

Fundamental concepts in management research and ensuring research quality : focusing on case study method

This paper discusses fundamental concepts in management research and ensuring research quality. It was presented at the European Academy of Management annual conference in 2008