Towards an Enterprise Software Component Ontology

Abstract

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