26,371 research outputs found
Towards a Theory on the Role of Ontologies in Software Engineering Problem Solving: Conclusions from a Theoretical Model of Methodological Works
We present and validate a theoretical model of methodological
works in Software Engineering that, without claiming for completeness,
allows us to investigate the role of ontologies in the problem solving
process related with the development of software. Our main conclusion
is the potential of ontologies as resources for an individual to think during
problem solving. We argument that suitable ontologies can support
solving strategies as well as motivate their invention. We also conclude
the importance of accompany an ontology with knowledge that guides
the engineer in reasoning with its concepts.
The model regards a methodological work as an heterogeneous theory
about a class of problems and about a number of conceptual elements.
Some of the elements are ontologies, which play the role of identifying and
relating aspects of the knowledge about the class of problems, making up
novel perspectives on the problems that may promote solving strategies.
For illustration purposes, we take Jackson’s “Problem Frames” as a
case study. We analyse this work through the former model, identifying
the ontologies, guides, and promoted strategies. Then we propose an
alternative ontology, based on that used in the KAOS approach; we reformulate
some parts of Jackson’s work through this ontology and propose
a strategy as well as some guides.ComisiĂłn Interministerial de Ciencia y TecnologĂa TIC 2003-02737-C02-0
On the role of domain ontologies in the design of domain-specific visual modeling langages
Domain-Specific Visual Modeling Languages should provide notations and abstractions that suitably support problem solving in well-defined application domains. From their user’s perspective, the language’s modeling primitives must be intuitive and expressive enough in capturing all intended aspects of domain conceptualizations. Over the years formal and explicit representations of domain conceptualizations have been developed as domain ontologies. In this paper, we show how the design of these languages can benefit from conceptual tools developed by the ontology engineering community
Knowledge Representation with Ontologies: The Present and Future
Recently, we have seen an explosion of interest in ontologies as
artifacts to represent human knowledge and as critical components in
knowledge management, the semantic Web, business-to-business
applications, and several other application areas. Various research
communities commonly assume that ontologies are the appropriate modeling
structure for representing knowledge. However, little discussion has
occurred regarding the actual range of knowledge an ontology can
successfully represent
Recommended from our members
Technical Issues in the Development of Knowledge-Based Services for the Semantic Web
The Semantic Web aims to extend the current Web with formal semantics in order to improve how users experience the Web, by ameliorating current activities and supporting the automation of some others. So far, current Semantic Web prototypes mostly aim at collecting and exposing information. Still, a semantic layer can support applying Knowledge-Based Systems techniques to the development of brand-new fully-fledged Knowledge-Based Services for the Web. In this paper, we present the technical issues that have to be faced in the development of such a kind of application by presenting the Online Design of Events Application: a Semantic Web-based design support system that assists event organisers in the process of preparing events such as workshops and conferences, by effectively reasoning over an inter-organisational process across the Web
Knowledge formalization in experience feedback processes : an ontology-based approach
Because of the current trend of integration and interoperability of industrial systems, their size and complexity continue to grow making it more difficult to analyze, to understand and to solve the problems that happen in their organizations. Continuous improvement methodologies are powerful tools in order to understand and to solve problems, to control the effects of changes and finally to capitalize knowledge about changes and improvements. These tools involve suitably represent knowledge relating to the concerned system. Consequently, knowledge management (KM) is an increasingly important source of competitive advantage for organizations. Particularly, the capitalization and sharing of knowledge resulting from experience feedback are elements which play an essential role in the continuous improvement of industrial activities. In this paper, the contribution deals with semantic interoperability and relates to the structuring and the formalization of an experience feedback (EF) process aiming at transforming information or understanding gained by experience into explicit knowledge. The reuse of such knowledge has proved to have significant impact on achieving themissions of companies. However, the means of describing the knowledge objects of an experience generally remain informal. Based on an experience feedback process model and conceptual graphs, this paper takes domain ontology as a framework for the clarification of explicit knowledge and know-how, the aim of which is to get lessons learned descriptions that are significant, correct and applicable
Evaluating Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Capabilites of Ontology Specification Languages
The interchange of ontologies across the World Wide Web (WWW) and the cooperation among heterogeneous agents placed on it is the main reason for the development of a new set of ontology specification languages, based on new web standards such as XML or RDF. These languages (SHOE, XOL, RDF, OIL, etc) aim to represent the knowledge contained in an ontology in a simple and human-readable way, as well as allow for the interchange of ontologies across the web. In this paper, we establish a common framework to compare the expressiveness of "traditional" ontology languages (Ontolingua, OKBC, OCML, FLogic, LOOM) and "web-based" ontology languages. As a result of this study, we conclude that different needs in KR and reasoning may exist in the building of an ontology-based application, and these needs must be evaluated in order to choose the most suitable ontology language(s)
Recommended from our members
Integration with Ontologies
One of today’s hottest IT topics is integration, as bringing together information from different sources and structures is not completely solved. The approach outlined here wants to illustrate how ontologies [Gr93] could help to support the integration process
The Semantic Grid: A future e-Science infrastructure
e-Science offers a promising vision of how computer and communication technology can support and enhance the scientific process. It does this by enabling scientists to generate, analyse, share and discuss their insights, experiments and results in an effective manner. The underlying computer infrastructure that provides these facilities is commonly referred to as the Grid. At this time, there are a number of grid applications being developed and there is a whole raft of computer technologies that provide fragments of the necessary functionality. However there is currently a major gap between these endeavours and the vision of e-Science in which there is a high degree of easy-to-use and seamless automation and in which there are flexible collaborations and computations on a global scale. To bridge this practice–aspiration divide, this paper presents a research agenda whose aim is to move from the current state of the art in e-Science infrastructure, to the future infrastructure that is needed to support the full richness of the e-Science vision. Here the future e-Science research infrastructure is termed the Semantic Grid (Semantic Grid to Grid is meant to connote a similar relationship to the one that exists between the Semantic Web and the Web). In particular, we present a conceptual architecture for the Semantic Grid. This architecture adopts a service-oriented perspective in which distinct stakeholders in the scientific process, represented as software agents, provide services to one another, under various service level agreements, in various forms of marketplace. We then focus predominantly on the issues concerned with the way that knowledge is acquired and used in such environments since we believe this is the key differentiator between current grid endeavours and those envisioned for the Semantic Grid
ODESWS, A Semantic Web Service Development
ODE SWS is a development environment to design Semantic
Web Services (SWS) at the knowledge level. ODE SWS describe
the service following a problem-solving approach in which the
SWS are modeled using tasks, to represent the SWS functional
features, and methods, to describe the SWS internal structure. In this paper, we describe the ODE SWS architecture and the capabilities of its graphical interface, which enables users to design SWS independently of the semantic markup language used to represent them
A Framework for Design and Composition of Semantic Web Services
Semantic Web Services (SWS) are Web Services (WS)
whose description is semantically enhanced with markup
languages (e.g., OWL-S). This semantic description will enable external agents and programs to discover, compose and
invoke SWSs. However, as a previous step to the specification of SWSs in a language, it must be designed at a conceptual level to guarantee its correctness and avoid
inconsistencies among its internal components. In this
paper, we present a framework for design and (semi)
automatic composition of SWSs at a language-independent
and knowledge level. This framework is based on a stack of
ontologies that (1) describe the different parts of a SWS;
and (2) contain a set of axioms that are really design rules to be verified by the ontology instances. Based on these ontologies, design and composition of SWSs can be viewed as the correct instantiation of the ontologies themselves. Once these instances have been created they will be exported to SWS languages such as OWL-S
- …