LOTED2: An Ontology of European Public Procurement Notices

This paper describes the construction of the LOTED2 ontology for the representation of European public procurement notices. LOTED2 follows initiatives around the creation of linked data-compliant representations of information regarding tender notices in Europe, but focusing on placing such representations within their legal context. It is therefore considered a legal ontology, as it supports the identification of legal concepts and more generally, legal reasoning. Unlike many other legal ontologies however, LOTED2 is designed to support the creation of Semantic Web applications. The methodology applied for building LOTED2 therefore seeks to find a compromise between the accurate representation of legal concepts and the usability of the ontology as a knowledge model for Semantic Web applications, while creating connections to other relevant ontologies in the domain

Analyzing the Usefulness of ThingFO as a Foundational Ontology for Sciences

This work specifies and defines all terms, properties and relationships of ThingFO –which stands for Thing Foundational Ontology. ThingFO is an ontology for particular and universal Things and Assertions placed at the foundational level in the context of a four-layered ontological architecture called FCDOntoArch. This is a four-layered ontological architecture, which considers foundational, core, domain and instance levels. In turn, the domain level is split down into two sub-levels, namely: top-domain and low-domain. Ontologies at the same level can be related to each other, except for the foundational level where only the ThingFO ontology is. Additionally, ontologies' terms, properties and relationships at lower levels can be semantically enriched by ontologies' terms properties and relationships from the higher levels. Since ThingFO is at the highest level, ontologies at lower levels benefit from reusing and extending its concepts. To illustrate the usefulness of ThingFO, we primarily analyze enriched terms of a couple of ontologies at the core level such as ProcessCO and SituationCO, among others, in which their concepts are cross-cutting concerns for many domain terminologies from diverse sciences.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Especificando y analizando una ontología de pruebas de software en el nivel ontológico de dominio superior

One of the Software Engineering areas that supports quality assurance is testing. Given that specific processes, artefacts, methods and ultimately strategies for software testing involve a large number of domain concepts, it is valuable to have a robust conceptual base, that is. a software testing ontology that defines the terms, properties, relationships and axioms explicitly and unambiguously. Ontologies for instance foster a clearer terminological understanding of process and method specifications for strategies, among many other benefits. After analyzing both the results of a conducted Systematic Literature Review of primary studies on conceptualized software testing ontologies and the state-of-the-art of testing-related standards, we decided to develop a software testing top-domain ontology named TestTDO that fits our goals. Therefore, this article specifies development, verification and validation aspects of the TestTDO. which was built following the Design Science Research approach.Un área de la Ingeniería del Software que da soporte al aseguramiento de la calidad es testing. Dado que los procesos, artefactos, métodos y. en última instancia, estrategias específicas para pruebas de software involucran una gran cantidad de conceptos de dominio, es valioso tener una base conceptual robusta, es decir, una ontología de pruebas de software que defina los términos, propiedades, relaciones y axiomas explícitamente y sin ambigüedades. Las ontologías, por ejemplo, fomentan una comprensión terminológica clara de las especificaciones de procesos y métodos para las estrategias, entre muchos otros beneficios. Después de analizar los resultados de una Revisión Sistemática de Literatura de estudios primarios sobre ontologías de pruebas de software conceptualizadas y el estado del arte de los estándares relacionados al área, decidimos desarrollar una ontología de dominio superior de pruebas de software llamada TestTDO que se ajuste a nuestros objetivos. Por lo tanto, este artículo especifica aspectos de desarrollo, verificación y validación de TestTDO. que fue construida siguiendo el enfoque de Design Science Research.Facultad de Informátic

Spatial ontologies for architectural heritage

Informatics and artificial intelligence have generated new requirements for digital archiving, information, and documentation. Semantic interoperability has become fundamental for the management and sharing of information. The constraints to data interpretation enable both database interoperability, for data and schemas sharing and reuse, and information retrieval in large datasets. Another challenging issue is the exploitation of automated reasoning possibilities. The solution is the use of domain ontologies as a reference for data modelling in information systems. The architectural heritage (AH) domain is considered in this thesis. The documentation in this field, particularly complex and multifaceted, is well-known to be critical for the preservation, knowledge, and promotion of the monuments. For these reasons, digital inventories, also exploiting standards and new semantic technologies, are developed by international organisations (Getty Institute, ONU, European Union). Geometric and geographic information is essential part of a monument. It is composed by a number of aspects (spatial, topological, and mereological relations; accuracy; multi-scale representation; time; etc.). Currently, geomatics permits the obtaining of very accurate and dense 3D models (possibly enriched with textures) and derived products, in both raster and vector format. Many standards were published for the geographic field or in the cultural heritage domain. However, the first ones are limited in the foreseen representation scales (the maximum is achieved by OGC CityGML), and the semantic values do not consider the full semantic richness of AH. The second ones (especially the core ontology CIDOC – CRM, the Conceptual Reference Model of the Documentation Commettee of the International Council of Museums) were employed to document museums’ objects. Even if it was recently extended to standing buildings and a spatial extension was included, the integration of complex 3D models has not yet been achieved. In this thesis, the aspects (especially spatial issues) to consider in the documentation of monuments are analysed. In the light of them, the OGC CityGML is extended for the management of AH complexity. An approach ‘from the landscape to the detail’ is used, for considering the monument in a wider system, which is essential for analysis and reasoning about such complex objects. An implementation test is conducted on a case study, preferring open source applications

Spatial ontologies for architectural heritage

Informatics and artificial intelligence have generated new requirements for digital archiving, information, and documentation. Semantic interoperability has become fundamental for the management and sharing of information. The constraints to data interpretation enable both database interoperability, for data and schemas sharing and reuse, and information retrieval in large datasets. Another challenging issue is the exploitation of automated reasoning possibilities. The solution is the use of domain ontologies as a reference for data modelling in information systems. The architectural heritage (AH) domain is considered in this thesis. The documentation in this field, particularly complex and multifaceted, is well-known to be critical for the preservation, knowledge, and promotion of the monuments. For these reasons, digital inventories, also exploiting standards and new semantic technologies, are developed by international organisations (Getty Institute, ONU, European Union). Geometric and geographic information is essential part of a monument. It is composed by a number of aspects (spatial, topological, and mereological relations; accuracy; multi-scale representation; time; etc.). Currently, geomatics permits the obtaining of very accurate and dense 3D models (possibly enriched with textures) and derived products, in both raster and vector format. Many standards were published for the geographic field or in the cultural heritage domain. However, the first ones are limited in the foreseen representation scales (the maximum is achieved by OGC CityGML), and the semantic values do not consider the full semantic richness of AH. The second ones (especially the core ontology CIDOC – CRM, the Conceptual Reference Model of the Documentation Commettee of the International Council of Museums) were employed to document museums’ objects. Even if it was recently extended to standing buildings and a spatial extension was included, the integration of complex 3D models has not yet been achieved. In this thesis, the aspects (especially spatial issues) to consider in the documentation of monuments are analysed. In the light of them, the OGC CityGML is extended for the management of AH complexity. An approach ‘from the landscape to the detail’ is used, for considering the monument in a wider system, which is essential for analysis and reasoning about such complex objects. An implementation test is conducted on a case study, preferring open source applications

Estrategia integrada de pruebas de software consciente de la situación y basada en escenarios

En la actualidad, las aplicaciones de software se han vuelto muy complejas ya que, en algunas situaciones particulares, dependen de otros sistemas o servicios para realizar correctamente sus funciones. En otras palabras, esto significa que un sistema no está aislado y está influenciado por entidades de contexto. Debido a su complejidad inherente, algunos enfoques o estrategias de pruebas de software existentes no son lo suficientemente efectivos para verificar y validar situaciones particulares en las que es relevante considerar y modelar las entidades de contexto. Además, hay un escaso número de metodologías que son útiles para probar este tipo de situaciones. Con la intención de contribuir en esta área, en esta tesis doctoral se propone una estrategia de pruebas de software basada en escenarios y consciente de la situación. Esta estrategia es consciente de la situación porque la situación debe ser modelada y considerada para producir casos de prueba. La misma fue inicialmente validada ya que se aplicó en dos empresas del ámbito privado por dos estudiantes de grado para sus proyectos finales de ingeniería. Una estrategia es un recurso fundamental de una organización que define un curso específico de acción a seguir, es decir, especifica qué se debe hacer y cómo hacerlo. A su vez, una estrategia debería integrar tres capacidades fundamentales o pilares, a saber: i) una especificación de proceso, ii) una especificación de métodos, y iii) una especificación de base conceptual. Por lo tanto, la estrategia propuesta en este trabajo también considera estas tres capacidades. El beneficio de integrar estos tres pilares en una estrategia en particular es que la misma especificará qué actividades están involucradas, cómo llevarlas a cabo a través de métodos, y todo esto dentro de un marco semántico de un vocabulario de uso común y compartido. Dado que una ontología es la representación más rica para modelar bases conceptuales, se considera que una estrategia integrada debería tener entonces una ontología como base conceptual y no meramente un glosario y/o taxonomía. Por ello, en esta tesis doctoral, se decidió desarrollar y utilizar una ontología de pruebas de software para dar soporte a la estrategia integrada. Además, las especificaciones de procesos y métodos deberían utilizar los conceptos que involucra esta base conceptual ontológica para que la estrategia sea consistente. Por otro lado, es importante contar con procesos bien especificados como parte de una estrategia integrada. Un proceso bien especificado debería describir cuáles son las principales actividades que deben ser realizadas, sus productos de trabajo consumidos y producidos, qué roles intervienen, cuál es el flujo a seguir entre las diferentes actividades, entre otros aspectos. Además, otro aspecto que fortalece las especificaciones de procesos es el modelado de diferentes vistas o perspectivas de proceso. Como beneficio, un proceso bien especificado no solo permite el entendimiento del mismo, sino que también facilita la comunicación entre las partes interesadas. Además, asegura la repetibilidad y la reproducibilidad en la implementación de las actividades y tareas.Doctor en Ciencias InformáticasUniversidad Nacional de La PlataFacultad de Informátic

Is there beauty in ontologies?

This position paper presents an introduction to the special issue of Applied Ontology on “Beautiful Ontologies”. It discusses the relevance of considering the notion of beauty when building and evaluating ontologies, making a parallel with other disciplines such as physics and software engineering. It also discusses the difference between the beauty of an ontology and the notion of quality generally considered in ontology evaluation. Finally, it discusses examples included in the articles of the special issue, to show that a beautiful ontology can be seen as one that integrates contradictory requirements