A formal theory of conceptual modeling universals

Conceptual Modeling is a discipline of great relevance to several areas in Computer Science. In a series of papers [1,2,3] we have been using the General Ontological Language (GOL) and its underlying upper level ontology, proposed in [4,5], to evaluate the ontological correctness of conceptual models and to develop guidelines for how the constructs of a modeling language (UML) should be used in conceptual modeling. In this paper, we focus on the modeling metaconcepts of classifiers and objects from an ontological point of view. We use a philosophically and psychologically well-founded theory of universals to propose a UML profile for Ontology Representation and Conceptual Modeling. The formal semantics of the proposed modeling elements is presented in a language of modal logics with quantification restricted to Sortal universals

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

How Conceptual Modeling Is Used

Conceptual models play an increasingly important role for business process engineering, information systems development, and customizing of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Despite the widespread interest in conceptual modeling, relatively little is known to date on the level and nature of conceptual modeling use in practice. Therefore our study investigates how practitioners use conceptual modeling. In particular, we address the following three key questions: To what extent do practitioners use conceptual modeling techniques and tools? How relevant is conceptual modeling for certain purposes? Are there barriers and success factors in using conceptual modeling? This paper informs information systems professionals about recent trends in the area of conceptual modeling. The results of our study should be considered when developing syllabuses for modeling courses as well as when judging the relevance of various research streams in the area of conceptual modeling

Endurant Types in Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling: Towards OntoUML 2.0

For over a decade now, a community of researchers has contributed to the development of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) - aimed at providing foundations for all major conceptual modeling constructs. This ontology has led to the development of an Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling language dubbed OntoUML, reflecting the ontological micro-theories comprising UFO. Over the years, UFO and OntoUML have been successfully employed in a number of academic, industrial and governmental settings to create conceptual models in a variety of different domains. These experiences have pointed out to opportunities of improvement not only to the language itself but also to its underlying theory. In this paper, we take the first step in that direction by revising the theory of types in UFO in response to empirical evidence. The new version of this theory shows that many of the meta-types present in OntoUML (differentiating Kinds, Roles, Phases, Mixins, etc.) should be considered not as restricted to Substantial types but instead should be applied to model Endurant Types in general, including Relator types, Quality types and Mode types. We also contribute a formal characterization of this fragment of the theory, which is then used to advance a metamodel for OntoUML 2.0. Finally, we propose a computational support tool implementing this updated metamodel

Stakeholder Experiences with Conceptual Modeling: An Empirical Investigation

During the design of an information system, a significant task that is sometimes undertaken is conceptual modeling. It involves designers building a representation called a conceptual schema that captures application domain features to be included in the information system. For five reasons, conceptual modeling has become increasingly important: (1) conceptual schemas help clarify different assumptions that stakeholders hold about the domain being modeled; (2) integrating conceptual schemas is critical to organizations effectively re-engineering their business processes; (3) the quality of conceptual schemas affects the quality of database schemas that can be generated automatically; (4) the quality of conceptual schemas affects the usability of databases; and (5) stakeholders working with distributed, heterogeneous databases cannot effectively transcend boundaries without high-quality conceptual schemas. While researchers have expended substantial effort on developing conceptual modeling methodologies, little empirical work has been done on stakeholder experiences with conceptual modeling. The meager results obtained suggest that organizations have found few benefits from conceptual modeling and that often it has fallen into disuse. Laboratory work indicates, however, that improved design outcomes occur when conceptual modeling is undertaken. For two reasons, we expect that stakeholders will experience problems with using conceptual modeling in practice. First, we believe that many designers approach conceptual modeling with a functionalist view of the world. We believe that a social relativist view more accurately describes how stakeholders conceive the world. Second, many conceptual modeling tools provide only incomplete representations of the application domain to be modeled. We are currently undertaking case-study research to document the conceptual modeling practices engaged in by a large public-sector organization. We are also seeking to identify the problems that stakeholders experi- ence when they participate in conceptual modeling exercises. Our goal is to provide a taxonomy of problems that the stakeholders face and ultimately to develop theory to account for why these problems occur

Comparing traditional conceptual modeling with ontology-driven conceptual modeling: An empirical study

[EN] This paper conducts an empirical study that explores the differences between adopting a traditional conceptual modeling (TCM) technique and an ontology-driven conceptual modeling (ODCM) technique with the objective to understand and identify in which modeling situations an ODCM technique can prove beneficial compared to a TCM technique. More specifically, we asked ourselves if there exist any meaningful differences in the resulting conceptual model and the effort spent to create such model between novice modelers trained in an ontology-driven conceptual modeling technique and novice modelers trained in a traditional conceptual modeling technique. To answer this question, we discuss previous empirical research efforts and distill these efforts into two hypotheses. Next, these hypotheses are tested in a rigorously developed experiment, where a total of 100 students from two different Universities participated. The findings of our empirical study confirm that there do exist meaningful differences between adopting the two techniques. We observed that novice modelers applying the ODCM technique arrived at higher quality models compared to novice modelers applying the TCM technique. More specifically, the results of the empirical study demonstrated that it is advantageous to apply an ODCM technique over an TCM when having to model the more challenging and advanced facets of a certain domain or scenario. Moreover, we also did not find any significant difference in effort between applying these two techniques. Finally, we specified our results in three findings that aim to clarify the obtained results. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This research has been funded by the Ghent University Special Research Fund (BOF 01N02014) and the National Bank of Belgium.Verdonck, M.; Gailly, F.; Pergl, R.; Guizzardi, G.; Franco Martins, B.; Pastor López, O. (2019). Comparing traditional conceptual modeling with ontology-driven conceptual modeling: An empirical study. Information Systems. 81:92-103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2018.11.009S921038

Representing Crowd Knowledge: Guidelines for Conceptual Modeling of User-generated Content

Organizations’ increasing reliance on externally produced information, such as online user-generated content (UGC) and crowdsourcing, challenges common assumptions about conceptual modeling in information systems (IS) development. We demonstrate UGC’s societal importance, analyze its distinguishing characteristics, identify specific conceptual modeling challenges in this setting, evaluate traditional and recently proposed approaches to modeling UGC, propose a set of conceptual modeling guidelines for developing IS that harness structured UGC, and demonstrate how to implement and evaluate the proposed guidelines using a case of development of a real crowdsourcing (citizen science) IS. We conclude by considering implications for conceptual modeling research and practice