Applying formal methods to standard development: the open distributed processing experience

Since their introduction, formal methods have been applied in various ways to different standards. This paper gives an account of these applications, focusing on one application in particular: the development of a framework for creating standards for Open Distributed Processing (ODP). Following an introduction to ODP, the paper gives an insight into the current work on formalising the architecture of the Reference Model of ODP (RM-ODP), highlighting the advantages to be gained. The different approaches currently being taken are shown, together with their associated advantages and disadvantages. The paper concludes that there is no one all-purpose approach which can be used in preference to all others, but that a combination of approaches is desirable to best fulfil the potential of formal methods in developing an architectural semantics for OD

Insights from an OTTR-centric Ontology Engineering Methodology

OTTR is a language for representing ontology modeling patterns, which enables to build ontologies or knowledge bases by instantiating templates. Thereby, particularities of the ontological representation language are hidden from the domain experts, and it enables ontology engineers to, to some extent, separate the processes of deciding about what information to model from deciding about how to model the information, e.g., which design patterns to use. Certain decisions can thus be postponed for the benefit of focusing on one of these processes. To date, only few works on ontology engineering where ontology templates are applied are described in the literature. In this paper, we outline our methodology and report findings from our ontology engineering activities in the domain of Material Science. In these activities, OTTR templates play a key role. Our ontology engineering process is bottom-up, as we begin modeling activities from existing data that is then, via templates, fed into a knowledge graph, and it is top-down, as we first focus on which data to model and postpone the decision of how to model the data. We find, among other things, that OTTR templates are especially useful as a means of communication with domain experts. Furthermore, we find that because OTTR templates encapsulate modeling decisions, the engineering process becomes flexible, meaning that design decisions can be changed at little cost.Comment: Paper accepted at the 14th Workshop on Ontology Design and Patterns (WOP 2023

A Foundation for the Concept of Role in Object Modelling

Standardization experts in object modelling are having difficulties with defining the concept of rol

Supporting ODP - Translating LOTOS to Z

This paper describes a translation of full LOTOS into Z. A common semantic model is defined and the translation is proved correct with respect to the semantics. The motivation for such a translation is the use of multiple viewpoints for specifying complex systems defined by the reference model of the Open Distributed Processing (ODP) standardization initiative. The postscript version available here is an extended version of what was published

Using Linguistic Patterns to Enhance Ontology Development

In this paper we describe how linguistic patterns can contribute to ontology development by enabling an easier reuse of some ontological resources. In particular, our research focuses on the reuse of ontology design patterns and ontology statements by relying on linguistic constructs at different stages of the reuse process. With this aim, we propose the employment of lexico-syntactic patterns with two objectives: 1) the reuse of ontology design patterns, and 2) the validation of ontology statements for their subsequent reuse in the ontology development. To illustrate the proposed approaches, we will present some examples of lexico-syntactic patterns and their employment in the reuse of ontology design patterns and in the validation of ontology statements

A Formal Foundation of the RM-ODP Conceptual Framework

This paper presents an approach for formalizing the RM-ODP (Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing), an ISO and ITU standard. The goal of this formalization is to clarify the RM-ODP modeling framework to make it more accessible to modelers such as system architects, designers and implementers, while opening the way for the formal verification of RM-ODP models, either within an ODP viewpoint or across multiple ODP viewpoints. The result of this work is a consistent formal representation of clauses 5, 6, 8 and 9 of part 2 of RM-ODP in their interrelations, which while being officially declared as one of its goals is currently missing in the standard. Our formalization is based on set theory and the classical predicate logic, and is expressed in the Alloy language