Fabiano Borges Ruy

Towards an enterprise ontology pattern language

Enterprise ontologies are useful for many purposes. Over the years, there have been a number of efforts aiming at building them. However, due to the complexity of the enterprise domain, enterprise ontologies tend to be complex and difficult to reuse. In this paper, we advocate in favor of organizing Core Enterprise Ontologies as Ontology Pattern Languages, since ontology patterns are more and more recognized as an approach that favors ontology reuse. Moreover, we present an initial version of the Enterprise Ontology Pattern Language (E-OPL), and show how it was used for building an enterprise ontology for a specific domain.

Ontology Engineering by Combining Ontology Patterns

Building proper reference ontologies is a hard task. There are a number of methods and tools that traditionally have been used to support this task. These include foundational theories, reuse of domain and core ontologies, development methods, and software tool support. In this context, an approach that has gained increased attention in recent years is the systematic application of ontology patterns. This paper discusses how Foundational and Domain-related Ontology Patterns can be derived, and how they can be applied in combination for building more consistent ontologies in a reuse-centered process.

Learning How to Manage Risks Using Organizational Knowledge

In spite of being an important software activity, many software organizations present difficulties in managing risks. This happens mainly due to their low maturity level, and because Risk Management is a complex and knowledge intensive task that requires experienced project managers, which many times are not available. In order to overcome this barrier, novice software engineers must learn how to perform this task, and organizational knowledge concerning it can be very useful. In this paper, we present a knowledge management approach to support organizational learning in Risk Management.

An ISO-based software process ontology pattern language and its application for harmonizing standards

Many efforts have been made for modeling and standardizing software processes. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7, the ISO sub-committee responsible for software and systems engineering, is one of the most important groups devoted to this task. However, standards developed by this committee are frequently inconsistent and even contradictory. This led to the need for an ISO Study Group to investigate the creation of an ontological infrastructure to establish a common conceptualization for underpinning all SC7 standards. This ISO initiative is a work in progress, which has focused on the software process domain and, in particular, considering the ISO/IEC 24744 standard. In this paper, we advocate in favor of using an Ontology Pattern Language (OPL) as the main component of this ontological infrastructure. We present ISP-OPL (ISO-based Software Process OPL), an OPL that can be applied as a basis for harmonizing software process-related ISO standards, favoring reuse when building aligned specific software process ontologies for Software Engineering sub-domains. In order to evaluate its applicability, we conducted an experiment involving seven domain ontologies, developed using ISP-OPL.

SEON: A Software Engineering Ontology Network

Software Engineering SE is a wide domain, where ontologies are useful instruments for dealing with Knowledge Management KM related problems. When SE ontologies are built and used in isolation, some problems remain, in particular those related to knowledge integration. The goal of this paper is to provide an integrated solution for better dealing with KM-related problems in SE by means of a Software Engineering Ontology Network SEON. SEON is designed with mechanisms for easing the development and integration of SE domain ontologies. The current version of SEON includes core ontologies for software and software processes, as well as domain ontologies for the main technical software engineering subdomains, namely requirements, design, coding and testing. We discuss the development of SEON and some of its envisioned applications related to KM.

From reference ontologies to ontology patterns and back

Abstract Building proper reference ontologies is a hard task. There are a number of methods and tools that traditionally have been used to support this task. These include the use of foundational theories, the reuse of domain and core ontologies, the adoption of development methods, as well as the support of proper software tools. In this context, an approach that has gained increasing attention in recent years is the systematic application of ontology patterns . However, a pattern-based approach to ontology engineering requires: the existence of a set of suitable patterns that can be reused in the construction of new ontologies; a proper methodological support for eliciting these patterns, as well as for applying them in the construction of these new models. The goal of this paper is twofold: (i) firstly, we present an approach for deriving conceptual ontology patterns from ontologies. These patterns are derived from ontologies of different generality levels, ranging from foundational to domain ontologies; (ii) secondly, we present guidelines that describe how these patterns can be applied in combination for building reference domain ontologies in a reuse-oriented process. In summary, this paper is about the construction of ontology patterns from ontologies, as well as the construction of ontologies from ontology patterns.

Towards an ontology pattern language for harmonizing software process related ISO standards

Many efforts have been made for modeling and standardizing software processes. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7, the ISO sub-committee responsible for software and systems engineering, is one of the most important groups devoted to this task. However, standards developed by this committee are frequently inconsistent and even contradictory. This led to the need for an ISO Study Group to investigate the creation of an ontological infrastructure to establish a common conceptualization for underpinning all SC7 standards. This ISO initiative is a work in progress, which has focused on the software process domain and, in particular, considering the ISO/IEC 24744 standard. In this paper, we advocate in favor of using an Ontology Pattern Language (OPL) as the main component of this ontological infrastructure. We present ISP-OPL (ISO-based Software Process OPL), an OPL that can be applied as a basis for harmonizing software process-related standards, favoring reuse when building aligned specific software process ontologies for SE sub-domains. In order to illustrate its application, we also present an ontology about the Requirements Engineering process, developed by using ISP-OPL.

Knowledge-based Support to Process Integration in ODE

Process integration in Software Engineering Environments (SEE) is very important to allow tool integration. In this paper, we present a knowledge-based approach to improve process integration in ODE, an ontology-based SEE.