Sari Hakkarainen

Semantic annotation framework to manage semantic heterogeneity of process models

Effective discovery and sharing of process models within and/or across enterprises are important in process model management. A semantic annotation approach has been applied for specifying process semantic heterogeneity in the semantic process model discovery in our previous work. In this paper, the approach is further developed into a complete and systematic semantic annotation framework. Four perspectives are tackled in our framework: basic description of process models (profile annotation), process modeling languages (meta-model annotation), process models (model annotation) and the purpose of the process models (goal annotation). Ontologies, including modeling ontology, domain specific ontology and goal ontology, are used for annotation of process models to achieve semantic interoperability. A set of mapping strategies are defined to guide users to annotate process models.

Semantic enrichment for improving systems interoperability

The overall goal addressed in this paper is to improve semantic interoperability in heterogeneous systems by means of establishing mappings between relevant domain ontologies. The mappings are discovered based on the technique of semantic enrichment through extension analysis, i.e. using instance information of the ontology to enrich the original ontology and further to calculate similarities between concepts in two ontologies. Text categorization is used to automatically assign instance to the concepts in the ontology. Information retrieval techniques are used to calculate similarity between concepts. Based on the similarities measure, a heuristic method is used to establish mapping assertions for the two ontologies. The method is illustrated using a product catalogue scenario.

A semantic transformation approach for ISO 15926

Traditional industries anticipate supporting cross-organizational cooperation as applied in the semantic Web and Web services environments. However, the international standards used in organisations are often developed prior to or independent from the novel technologies. We demonstrate a solution, namely to perform controlled semantic transformations enabling both technologies. A study in the semantic relationship between an international standard, ISO 15926 Part 2, and a semantic Web technology, OWL DL is reported. Three alternative semantic transformation approaches are identified where two are further elaborated. Accordingly, two Transformation Protocols are developed in order to transform ISO 15926 components to OWL. Further, two Inverse Transformation Protocols are developed. The transformations are analysed and the alternative transformation protocols are evaluated.

Choosing appropriate method guidelines for web-ontology building

Ontology is a core component in semantic Web applications. The employment of an ontology building method affects the quality of ontology and the applicability of ontology language. An evaluation approach for ontology building guidelines is presented. The evaluation is based on semiotic quality framework, an evaluation scheme frequently applied for evaluating the quality of conceptual models. The framework is extended with situational and computational capabilities. A sample of ontology building method guidelines is analyzed in general and evaluated comparatively in a case study at an oil company in particular. Directions for further refinement of ontology building methods are discussed.

Domain model-driven software engineering: A method for discovery of dependency links

Context: Dependency management often suffers from labor intensity and complexity in creating and maintaining the dependency relations in practice. This is even more critical in a distributed development, in which developers are geographically distributed and a wide variety of tools is used. In those settings, different interpretations of software requirements or usage of different terminologies make it challenging to predict the change impact. Objective: is (a) to describe a method facilitating change management in geographically distributed software engineering by effective discovery and establishment of dependency links using domain models; (b) to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Method: A domain model, providing a common reference point, is used to manage development objects and to automatically support dependency discovery. We propose to associate (annotate) development objects with the concepts from the model. These associations are used to compute dependency among development objects, and are stepwise refined to direct dependency links (i.e. enabling product traceability). To evaluate the method, we conducted a laboratory-based randomized experiment on two real cases. Six participants were using an implemented prototype and two comparable tools to perform simulated tasks. Results: In the paper we elaborate on the proposed method discussing its functional steps. Results from the experiment show that the method can be effectively used to assist in discovery of dependency links. Users have discovered on average fourteen percent more dependency links than by using the comparable tools. Conclusions: The proposed method advocates the use of domain models throughout the whole development life-cycle and is apt to facilitate multi-site software engineering. The experimental study and results suggest that the method is effective in the discovery of dependencies among development objects.

Process of Product Fragments Management in Distributed Development

Management of product constituent fragments is essential for large scale logically or physically distributed projects. Geographically distributed development projects have special settings and needs – special attention has to be given to artifacts management because developers are likely to use different representation formats and a variety of tools for the artifact production. The question is: how can artifacts in different representation formats be related and managed?

Evaluation of a conceptual model-based method for discovery of dependency links

In practice dependency management often suffers from labor intensity and complexity in creating and maintaining the dependency relations Our method targets projects, where developers are geographically distributed and a wide range of tools is used A conceptual domain model is used to inter-relate the development objects and to automate dependency link discovery The proposed method is based on association of development objects with concepts from domain model These associations are used to compute dependency among development objects, and are stepwise refined to direct dependency links. A preliminary empirical evaluation of the method is conducted The method is evaluated both on performance and psychological variables The evaluation has been performed in laboratory settings using two real cases The results, although preliminary, provide positive evidence about the ability of our method to automate discovery of dependency relations, the analysis indicates that the method is perceived to be easy to use and useful by its potential users.

Domain Model Driven Approach to Change Impact Assessment

Information system development is a highly iterative process in which developers seek to capture the needs and desires of all stakeholders. The goal is to transform the requirements into a complete system consisting of both manual and computerized parts. The product of such a development project undergoes changes because of its iterative nature. Extensive attention is given to traceability as a means to relate different different system descriptions and to allow changes in one of the system descriptions — requirements specification, design, code, documentation, or test scenarios — to be predicted and traced to the corresponding fragments of the other descriptions.1 Such correspondence relationships should be maintained throughout the lifetime of a system in order to manage the artifact.

Situated Support for Choice of Representation

As more and more companies are augmenting their data to include semantics it is imperative that the choices made when choosing the modelling language are well founded in knowledge about the language and the domain in question. This work demonstrates how the semiotic quality framework can facilitate the choice of the most suited language for a real world application. Computational and situated features are introduced as an extension to the framework.

Situated support for choice of representation for a semantic web application

As more and more companies are augmenting their data to include semantics, it is imperative that the choices made when choosing the modelling language are well founded in knowledge about the language and the domain in question. This work extends the Semiotic Quality Framework with computational and situated instruments. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the extended Semiotic Quality Framework can facilitate the choice of the most suited language for a real world application. The application is a directory services system, which currently is being moved into the realms of the Semantic Web.