Bogumiła Hnatkowska

The Knowledge Increase Estimation Framework for Ontology Integration on the Instance Level

Integration of big collections of data is time and cost consuming process. It can be beneficial when the knowledge is distributed in different sources, or not – when different sources contain redundant information or, what worse, inconsistent information. Authors propose a formula to estimate knowledge increase after the process of ontology integration on the instance level. The validity of the formula was checked by a questionnaire and confirmed by a statistical study. The formula allows to estimate knowledge increase in objective manner.

CDMM-F – Domain Languages Framework

Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) are mini-programming languages which enable their users to abstract from technical details and focus on business domain. DSLs can be used within a framework, i.e. platform for developing software applications. The paper presents such a framework called CDMM-F for building Java applications. The additional tools, prepared by the authors, support DSL definition. The constraints a DSL should fulfill to be CDMM-F compliant are thoroughly described in the paper, expressed in the form of the CDMM meta-meta-model and demonstrated in a case-study. The main advantage of proposed solution is meta-meta-model simplicity and high reusability of DSL elements. Once defined they can be connected in different configurations (contexts) according to the actual needs. The framework architecture that enables this feature is also presented.

A New Ontology-Based Approach for Construction of Domain Model

Domain model is one of the most important artefacts in software engineering. It can be built with the use of domain ontologies. The objective of the authors’ research is to elaborate an effective approach to domain model construction based on knowledge extraction from existing ontologies. A significant element of the approach is knowledge extraction algorithm. In this paper, a modified, more flexible version of the extraction algorithm is presented. A comparison of the new algorithm with the old one is conducted based on a case study. Both algorithms produce similar results regarding quality measures. In contrast to the old algorithm, the new is parameterized and therefore can be applied in an incremental way what is a valuable feature.

Domain Modeling Based on Requirements Specification and Ontology

Domain model plays an important role in software development. Typically, it is a primary input to elaboration of a system model which in turn is translated into source code and related database schemas. Effective development of domain model is a part of requirement engineering during which domain experts are employed to identify domain entities and relationships among them. We claim that this task can be supported by the use of domain ontologies from which interesting knowledge can be extracted. The starting point to knowledge extraction is an existing requirements specification. In this paper, we investigate how the form of requirements specification influences the quality of extracted model. Some measures allowing to assess the quality are introduced. A case study has shown that in the most cases the simplified version of a requirements specification is enough to obtain a satisfactory domain model, however if the domain is very complex, the extended version of requirements specification could be necessary.

Transformation of OWL2 Property Axioms to Groovy.

Ontology is a formal representation of domain knowledge. It may be effectively used in software development – large parts of the object-oriented code can be automatically generated from existing domain ontologies. The paper is related to transformations from OWL2 to Groovy. It proposes transformations of OWL2 properties together with object property axioms. Many axioms, e.g. asymmetry, irreflexivity have not been considered in the existing literature up to now. Mapping of some others is incomplete. Proposed transformations preserve the OWL2 semantics of axioms, assuring model consistency with the original definition. The implemented rules either guarantee consistency of the source code by performing additional actions ‘behind the scene’ or prohibit inconsistency by throwing exceptions. As a result, their application can speed up the development process and produce the source code of high quality at the same time. All defined transformation rules were implemented and verified by several examples. A bigger case study confirmed the usability of the rules. Both the tool as well as the case study are publicly available.

Towards Definition of a Unified Domain Meta-model

The domain model is one the most important artifacts produced at early stages of software development which can be reused efficiently during software design and implementation. Unfortunately, there is no clear explanation what should be included in the domain model to minimize modeling effort and maximize the potential later benefits. Authors of the paper try to address this gap by proposing a definition of a unified domain meta-model, which is the result of literature overview and authors’ own experiences. The purpose of the literature analysis was to assess the existing definitions of domain models and to identify their common parts. On that basis, a unified meta-model was proposed. Its application in real projects confirmed the meta-model usefulness.

Automatic Processing of Dynamic Business Rules Written in a Controlled Natural Language

Business rules are such requirements that can change very often. As they are formulated by business people (e.g. domain experts) they should be expressed in the way that is—from one side—easy to understood and—from the other—possible for automatic processing. This paper demonstrates a solution to the processing of dynamic business rules which are written in a controlled natural language. A user can add or modify rules during program operation influencing the way the program behaves. The proof-of-concept implementation confirmed that such approach is feasible and can be extended to become mature enough to be introduced in production.

Business Rule Patterns Catalog for Structural Business Rules

Business rules are substantial citizens of requirement world. Similarly to software requirements they can be specified with the use of patterns. Business rules patterns increase the quality of a specification assuring business rules representation consistency and helping in revealing missing or overlapping rules. The aim of the paper is to propose a catalog of business rules patterns for structural rules. Such rules extend the definition of the domain expressing mandatory constraints. The catalog is constructed with two main assumptions in mind: it should be flexible enough to cover most of the business rules from that category, and it should not put too strong constraints on its users. The catalog has been developed as a result of literature overview including investigation of existing pattern catalogs. The usefulness of proposed catalog is then checked by a case study when the business rules patterns are used to express business rules from existing sources.

Automatic SUMO to UML translation

Existing ontologies are a valuable source of domain knowledge. This knowledge could be extracted and reused to create domain models. The extraction process can be aided by tools that enable browsing ontology, marking interesting notions and automatic conversion of selected elements to other notations. The paper presents a tool that can be used for SUMO to UML translation. Such a transformation is feasible and results in a high-quality domain model which is consistent, correct, and complete, providing that input ontology has the same features.

The Use of Aspects to Simplify Concurrent Programming

Developers who create multi-threaded programs must pay attention to ensuring safe implementations that avoid problems and prevent introduction of a system in an inconsistent state. To achieve this objective programming languages offer more and more support for the programmer by syntactic structures and standard libraries. Despite these enhancements, multi-threaded programming is still generally considered to be difficult. The aim of our study was the analysis of existing aspect oriented solutions, which were designed to simplify concurrent programming, propose improvements to these solutions and examine influence of concurrent aspects on complexity of programs. Improved solutions were compared with existing by listing differing characteristics. Then we compared classical concurrent applications with their aspect oriented equivalents using metrics. Values of 2 metrics (from 7 considered) decreased after using aspect oriented solutions. Values of 2 other metrics decreased or remained at the same level. The rest behaved unstably depending on the problem. No metric reported increase of complexity in more than one aspect oriented version of program from set. Our results indicate that the use of aspects does not increase the complexity of a program and in some cases application of aspects can reduce it.