Ontology Based Method Engineering

We need conceptual modelling languages to gain domain knowledge in the requirements engineering and analysis phases of an IS development project. These languages should serve an IS expert as means of communication between him or her and the domain expert. Many different modelling languages have been used for conceptual modelling. Consequently, questions relating to the quality of these languages have arisen. Wand, Weber and others have evaluated these languages using an ontology. Each of the languages was found to contain certain deficits. Because our aim is to construct a language without such deficits, we propose the opposite technique. We develop an ontologically clear modelling language for process modelling with the help of the BWW representational model. In addition to this modelling language, we introduce a process model which guides model creation. Both components form a conceptual modelling method

Language-Critical Enterprise and Software Engineering

With service-oriented architectures and the process-centric development of application systems, we are experiencing the beginning of a reorientation in how information technology is used in the global economy as well as in our private lives. Language-critical Organization Theory has thus become a discipline in research and teaching. Because of the global nature of these endeavors, it is important to look for a common basis for possible cooperation partners in this field. The necessary efforts are enormous and can only be managed successfully by working together. Looking at how the philosophy of science has developed throughout the twentieth century seems to imply that a) the primarily American analytic philosophy of science paired with b) the methodical constructivism of predominantly German origin (Erlangen and Constance) could form this common basis. In this paper, both philosophies, well-grounded in the works of Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and Frege (1848-1925), will form the foundation (Lorenzen, 1994) substantiating practical development in the field of e.g. service-oriented architecture. The common foundation will also disclose what people must be able to do or, respectively, what they must know (understand) if they want to work successfully in the IT-industry in the future

The Details of Conceptual Modelling Notations are Important - A Comparison of Relationship Normative Language

Discussions of conceptual modelling assume that notation details are of secondary importance, a matter of taste and past experience rather than of science. For example, it does not really matter if cardinality is shown with a \u27crow\u27s foot\u27 or with the symbol \u271..*\u27. This paper argues that such an assumption is wrong and that the notation is extremely important in the process of modelling relationships because of the normative language that the notation specifies. Normative language is shown to be a useful way of understanding and comparing relationship notation. Barker\u27s practical relationship definition, using a formal notation, is shown to be sufficiently well formed to allow the modeller to make sense of the domain in their own linguistic context. Less formal notations are shown to disadvantage the less experienced modelle

WHAT’S IN A SERVICE? SPECIFYING THE BUSINESS SEMANTICS OF SOFTWARE SERVICES

The success of the service-oriented computing (SOC) paradigm considerably depends on the ability of service consumers to distinguish between published services and choose the ones best suited for a development project. Current SOC standards primarily give information about technical service properties such as the programming interface and the binding information. This enables designers to analyze the technical compatibility of services with the rest of the system. On the basis of such technical information, it is difficult to assess which business semantics a service actually implements and whether it is suited to satisfy functional requirements, however. In this paper, we therefore propose the WS-Functionality language which allows providers to specify the business semantics of software services in business terms. In a design science approach, we firstly describe how conceptual models, which contain business terms and relationships between them, can be used to specify the business semantics of services. Building upon this solution concept, we present the language constructs of WS-Functionality and show a prototypic implementation as proof-of-concept. In a controlled experiment, we were able to support our claim that the information provided with WS-Functionality enhances the ability of service consumers to analyze the business semantics of services and judge whether it satisfies existing functional requirements

Semantic Model Alignment for Business Process Integration

Business process models describe an enterprise’s way of conducting business and in this form the basis for shaping the organization and engineering the appropriate supporting or even enabling IT. Thereby, a major task in working with models is their analysis and comparison for the purpose of aligning them. As models can differ semantically not only concerning the modeling languages used, but even more so in the way in which the natural language for labeling the model elements has been applied, the correct identification of the intended meaning of a legacy model is a non-trivial task that thus far has only been solved by humans. In particular at the time of reorganizations, the set-up of B2B-collaborations or mergers and acquisitions the semantic analysis of models of different origin that need to be consolidated is a manual effort that is not only tedious and error-prone but also time consuming and costly and often even repetitive. For facilitating automation of this task by means of IT, in this thesis the new method of Semantic Model Alignment is presented. Its application enables to extract and formalize the semantics of models for relating them based on the modeling language used and determining similarities based on the natural language used in model element labels. The resulting alignment supports model-based semantic business process integration. The research conducted is based on a design-science oriented approach and the method developed has been created together with all its enabling artifacts. These results have been published as the research progressed and are presented here in this thesis based on a selection of peer reviewed publications comprehensively describing the various aspects