Christian Kop

Conceptual Modeling – ER 2005

Specific Approaches.- Conceptual Modeling of Structure and Behavior with UML - The Top Level Object-Oriented Framework (TLOOF) Approach.- How to Manage Uniformly Software Architecture at Different Abstraction Levels.- Schema Integration Based on Uncertain Semantic Mappings.- Process Modeling and Views.- Combining Intention-Oriented and State-Based Process Modeling.- Pattern-Based Analysis of the Control-Flow Perspective of UML Activity Diagrams.- A Three-Layered XML View Model: A Practical Approach.- Conceptual Modeling in eLearning.- Modeling Group-Based Education.- Learning Process Models as Mediators Between Didactical Practice and Web Support.- Managing Models and Modeling.- A Fundamental View on the Process of Conceptual Modeling.- How to Tame a Very Large ER Diagram (Using Link Analysis and Force-Directed Drawing Algorithms).- A Multilevel Dictionary for Model Management.- A MOF-Compliant Approach to Software Quality Modeling.- Requirements and Software Engineering.- Conceptual Modeling Based on Transformation Linguistic Patterns.- Applying Modular Method Engineering to Validate and Extend the RESCUE Requirements Process.- Security Patterns Meet Agent Oriented Software Engineering: A Complementary Solution for Developing Secure Information Systems.- Ontologies.- Kuaba Ontology: Design Rationale Representation and Reuse in Model-Based Designs.- Ontology Creation: Extraction of Domain Knowledge from Web Documents.- Choosing Appropriate Method Guidelines for Web-Ontology Building.- Web Services and Navigational Models.- Conceptual Model Based Semantic Web Services.- Automatically Grounding Semantically-Enriched Conceptual Models to Concrete Web Services.- Transforming Web Requirements into Navigational Models: AN MDA Based Approach.- Aspects of Workflow Modeling.- Accelerating Workflows with Fixed Date Constraints.- Workflow Data Patterns: Identification, Representation and Tool Support.- Actor-Oriented Design of Scientific Workflows.- Blueprints and Measures for ETL Workflows.- Queries and OLAP Summaries.- Vague Sets or Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets for Handling Vague Data: Which One Is Better?.- A Semantic Approach to Query Rewriting for Integrated XML Data.- A Taxonomy of Inaccurate Summaries and Their Management in OLAP Systems.- Temporal and Spatial Modeling.- XCM: Conceptual Modeling for Dynamic Domains.- Precise Modeling and Verification of Topological Integrity Constraints in Spatial Databases: From an Expressive Power Study to Code Generation Principles.- Topological Relationships Between Complex Lines and Complex Regions.

From textual scenarios to a conceptual schema

Scenarios are a very popular means for describing and analyzing behavioral aspects on the level of natural language. In information systems design, they form the basis for a subsequent step of conceptual dynamic modeling. To enhance this step, linguistic instruments prove applicable for transforming scenarios into conceptual schemas of various models. This transformation usually consists of three steps: linguistic analysis, component mapping and schema construction. Within this paper we investigate to which extent these steps may be performed automatically in the framework of KCPM, a conceptual predesign model which is used as an Interlingua between natural language and arbitrary conceptual models.

Linguistically based requirements engineering — the NIBA-project

Abstract Usually, the development of an information system (or some part of it) starts with requirement elicitation followed by a phase of collecting and analyzing which results in a set of requirements specifications. As opposed to conventional conceptual modeling, where input texts are formalized, our approach suggests the idea of collecting and cataloguing natural language patterns in a non-textual form immediately after a linguistic analysis. This linguistic analysis is done according to the NTMS model. Collecting and cataloguing of natural language data is supported by KCPM.

Business Process Modeling and Requirements Modeling

Business process modeling is an important part of each software development project. No software is developed without specifying its use within the context of business processes. Since business process modeling is an important task during requirements engineering, in our opinion the same basic modeling notions should be used. This paper gives a first proposal how this can be done.

From OWL class and property labels to human understandable natural language

The ontology language OWL has become increasingly important during the previous years. However due to the uncontrolled growth, OWL ontologies in many cases are very heterogeneous with respect to the class and property labels that often lack a common and systematic view. For this reason we linguistically analyzed OWL class and property labels focusing on their implicit structure. Based on the results of this analysis we generated a first proposal for linguistically determined label generation which can be seen as a prerequisite for mapping OWL concepts to natural language patterns.

Guideline based evaluation and verbalization of OWL class and property labels

The ontology language OWL has become increasingly important during the previous years. However due to the uncontrolled growth, OWL ontologies in many cases are very heterogeneous with respect to the class and property labels that often lack a common and systematic view. For this reason we developed linguistically based guidelines for OWL class and property labels focusing on their implicit structure. Considering these guidelines we propose an evaluation mechanism including rules for comparing the linguistically triggered label interpretations to their OWL internal representations. Our proposal also includes the verbalization of these evaluated OWL labels.

Semantic Tagging and Chunk-Parsing in Dynamic Modeling

The paper outlines a multilevel tagging approach to the linguistic analysis of requirements texts. It is shown that extended semantic tagging including chunk-parsing of noun-groups and prepositional groups enables to identify structural items which can be mapped to the conceptual notions for dynamic modeling in KCPM, namely actor, operation-type and condition.

Towards Conceptualizing Quality-Related Stakeholder Interactions in Software Development

The paper addresses the issue of organizing quality-related interaction between business stakeholders and software developers relying on established common vocabulary. It establishes a conceptual representation for the process of such interaction. This conceptualization is based on a set of notions representing software quality and its particular incarnations; they are used to define the activities of the interaction process. The process is conceptualized on two levels: a coarse-grained level defining the set of generic activities and the conditions of launching these activities and a fine-grained level describing particular interaction steps in detail. The conceptualization is expected to be shared as a part of upcoming ontology of stakeholder quality perception and assessment.

Harmonizing the Quality View of Stakeholders

Abstract Due to the nature of software development processes, different parties (users, developers, business actors, etc.) have different views on the quality a system under development (SUD) is intended to have. Consequently, these views have to be harmonized. This chapter summarizes the related state-of-the-art and presents a conceptualization of quality view harmonization. In particular, we will deal with and conceptualize the following dimensions: the SUD quality itself, the activities of the harmonization process including the interaction of the parties involved while gathering quality requirements, the knowledge about these parties and the differences in their perception of quality, and the amount of knowledge about quality-related issues. The conceptualized knowledge of these dimensions forms the basis of an ontology for supporting the interaction process. The structure of the chapter is defined along these dimensions: For every area of knowledge we will propose a set of concepts and align the state-of-the-art approaches to them. The concepts presented here are partly a result of the ongoing project Quality Aware Software Engineering, which is funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG).

Towards Simulation-Based Quality Requirements Elicitation: A Position Paper

The future users of a system under development are not necessarily good at talking about the quality they require of that system if they cannot yet experience it. We therefore propose to support them by a simulation of the system under development thus allowing them to experience and validate system quality. Requirements are supposed to be expressed in a user-centered glossary-based semantic model.