Towards an Enterprise Software Component Ontology

The paper describes an ontology of enterprise software components (ESCO). Its purpose is to reduce the conceptual gap between component specifications and their corresponding business descriptions, i.e., business processes and business entities. To this end, the different types of enterprise components and their semantic relationships are analyzed. The ontology axioms are formally expressed in description logics. ESCO contributes to a shared understanding of key concepts in application system development

Ontology engineering for simulation component reuse

Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) simulation packages (CSPs) are widely used in industry, although they have yet to operate across organizational boundaries. Reuse across organizations is restricted by the same semantic issues that restrict the inter-organizational use of web services. The current representations of web components are predominantly syntactic in nature lacking the fundamental semantic underpinning required to support discovery on the emerging semantic web. Semantic models, in the form of ontology, utilized by web service discovery and deployment architectures provide one approach to support simulation model reuse. Semantic interoperation is achieved through the use of simulation component ontologies to identify required components at varying levels of granularity (including both abstract and specialized components). Selected simulation components are loaded into a CSP, modified according to the requirements of the new model and executed. The paper presents the development of an ontology, connector software and web service discovery architecture. The ontology is extracted from simulation scenarios involving airport, restaurant and kitchen service suppliers. The ontology engineering framework and discovery architecture provide a novel approach to inter-organizational simulation, adopting a less intrusive interface between participants. Although specific to CSPs the work has wider implications for the simulation community

Semantic web services for simulation component reuse and interoperability: An ontology approach

Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Simulation Packages (CSPs) are widely used in industry primarily due to economic factors associated with developing proprietary software platforms. Regardless of their widespread use, CSPs have yet to operate across organizational boundaries. The limited reuse and interoperability of CSPs are affected by the same semantic issues that restrict the inter-organizational use of software components and web services. The current representations of Web components are predominantly syntactic in nature lacking the fundamental semantic underpinning required to support discovery on the emerging Semantic Web. The authors present new research that partially alleviates the problem of limited semantic reuse and interoperability of simulation components in CSPs. Semantic models, in the form of ontologies, utilized by the authors’ Web service discovery and deployment architecture provide one approach to support simulation model reuse. Semantic interoperation is achieved through a simulation component ontology that is used to identify required components at varying levels of granularity (i.e. including both abstract and specialized components). Selected simulation components are loaded into a CSP, modified according to the requirements of the new model and executed. The research presented here is based on the development of an ontology, connector software, and a Web service discovery architecture. The ontology is extracted from simulation scenarios involving airport, restaurant and kitchen service suppliers. The ontology engineering framework and discovery architecture provide a novel approach to inter-organizational simulation, by adopting a less intrusive interface between participants Although specific to CSPs this work has wider implications for the simulation community. The reason being that the community as a whole stands to benefit through from an increased awareness of the state-of-the-art in Software Engineering (for example, ontology-supported component discovery and reuse, and service-oriented computing), and it is expected that this will eventually lead to the development of a unique Software Engineering-inspired methodology to build simulations in future

Ontology-based patterns for the integration of business processes and enterprise application architectures

Increasingly, enterprises are using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). SOA has the potential to bridge the gap between business and technology and to improve the reuse of existing applications and the interoperability with new ones. In addition to service architecture descriptions, architecture abstractions like patterns and styles capture design knowledge and allow the reuse of successfully applied designs, thus improving the quality of software. Knowledge gained from integration projects can be captured to build a repository of semantically enriched, experience-based solutions. Business patterns identify the interaction and structure between users, business processes, and data. Specific integration and composition patterns at a more technical level address enterprise application integration and capture reliable architecture solutions. We use an ontology-based approach to capture architecture and process patterns. Ontology techniques for pattern definition, extension and composition are developed and their applicability in business process-driven application integration is demonstrated

A First-Order Logic Formalization of the Industrial Ontology Foundry Signature Using Basic Formal Ontology

Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology used in hundreds of active projects in scientific and other domains. BFO has been selected to serve as top-level ontology in the Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF), an initiative to create a suite of ontologies to support digital manufacturing on the part of representatives from a number of branches of the advanced manufacturing industries. We here present a first draft set of axioms and definitions of an IOF upper ontology descending from BFO. The axiomatization is designed to capture the meanings of terms commonly used in manufacturing and is designed to serve as starting point for the construction of the IOF ontology suite

Enterprise application reuse: Semantic discovery of business grid services

Web services have emerged as a prominent paradigm for the development of distributed software systems as they provide the potential for software to be modularized in a way that functionality can be described, discovered and deployed in a platform independent manner over a network (e.g., intranets, extranets and the Internet). This paper examines an extension of this paradigm to encompass ‘Grid Services’, which enables software capabilities to be recast with an operational focus and support a heterogeneous mix of business software and data, termed a Business Grid - "the grid of semantic services". The current industrial representation of services is predominantly syntactic however, lacking the fundamental semantic underpinnings required to fulfill the goals of any semantically-oriented Grid. Consequently, the use of semantic technology in support of business software heterogeneity is investigated as a likely tool to support a diverse and distributed software inventory and user. Service discovery architecture is therefore developed that is (a) distributed in form, (2) supports distributed service knowledge and (3) automatically extends service knowledge (as greater descriptive precision is inferred from the operating application system). This discovery engine is used to execute several real-word scenarios in order to develop and test a framework for engineering such grid service knowledge. The examples presented comprise software components taken from a group of Investment Banking systems. Resulting from the research is a framework for engineering servic

Overview of methodologies for building ontologies

A few research groups are now proposing a series of steps and methodologies for developing ontologies. However, mainly due to the fact that Ontological Engineering is still a relatively immature discipline, each work group employs its own methodology. Our goal is to present the most representative methodologies used in ontology development and to perform an analysis of such methodologies against the same framework of reference. So, the goal of this paper is not to provide new insights about methodologies, but to put it all in one place and help people to select which methodology to use

A Web Services Component Discovery and Deployment Architecture for Simulation Model Reuse

CSPs are widely used in industry, although have yet to operate across organizational boundaries. Reuse across organizations is restricted by the same semantic issues that restrict the inter-organization use of web services. The current representations of web components are predominantly syntactic in nature lacking the fundamental semantic underpinning required to support discovery on the emerging semantic web. Semantic models, in the form of ontology, utilized by web service discovery and deployment architecture provide one approach to support simulation model reuse. Semantic interoperation is achieved through the use of simulation component ontology to identify required components at varying levels of granularity (including both abstract and specialized components). Selected simulation components are loaded into a CSP, modified according to the requirements of the new model and executed. The paper presents the development carried out within CSPI-PDG and Fluidity Group at Brunel University, of an ontology, connector software and web service discovery architecture. The ontology is extracted from simulation scenarios involving airport, restaurant and kitchen service suppliers. The ontology engineering framework and discovery architecture provide a novel approach to inter-organization simulation, adopting a less intrusive interface between participants. Although specific to CSPs the work has wider implications for the simulation community