Ontology formal methods in software

This model lays the foundation for developing a complex system and supporting the program development. One of the challenges for a mixed methods project such as the ahrcfunded beyond the multiplex is that it produces mixed data data that is different in its file format, structure, and content. Mike hinchey formal methods formal methods are mathematically based techniques for specification, development and verification of systems, both hardware and software. Idef5 is a software engineering method to develop and maintain usable, accurate, domain ontologies. Ontology development is largely aimed at ai experts with knowledge of diverse techniques originating from the field of ai. Home ontology engineering also called ontology building is a set of tasks related to the development of ontologies for a particular domain. Developing an ontology is akin to defining a set of data and their structure for other programs to use. Principles, methods and applications semantic scholar. According to the expressiveness of the formalism used, one can further distinguish lightweight and heavyweight ontologies. L1 meets o2 and o3 formal ontologies are theories that attempt to give precise mathematical formulations of the properties and relations of certain entities. The swo covers areas such as the software type, licence, manufacturer of the software, the input and output data types and the uses i.

The software ontology swo is a resource for describing software tools, their types, tasks, versions, provenance and data associated. Identity criterion ontology learning core ontology formal axiom competency question these keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. Software engineering and formal methods springerlink. Ontology development tools based on software engineering techniques. We propose a formal method for ontology axioms transformation into application. It is a subfield of knowledge engineering that studies the ontology development process, the ontology life cycle, the methods and methodologies for building ontologies. The formal methods used during the development process provide a mechanism for eliminating problems, which are difficult to overcome using other software process models. Ontologybased applications in the age of the semantic web.

Using ontologies for software development knowledge reuse. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. The software ontology has adapted agile software engineering methods into the ontology engineering process. Formal model for representing the knowledge base of the software environment the quality of the software environment depends on the quality of the knowledge base training. Leo obrst, phd suzette stoutenburg kevin cohen jean stanford approved for public release. A formal, ontological framework for characterizing collaborative ontology design workflows formalization of context and initial methods and software for generating mappings which contextualise ontologies new methods for ontology alignment, selection and modularization a taskcentric user study highlighting limitations of current. Ontology is a system of belief that reflects an interpretation by an individual about what constitutes a. Wolff contrasted ontology, or general metaphysics, which applied to all things, with special metaphysical theories such as those of the soul, of bodies, or of god. Ontology and epistemology are two different ways of viewing a research philosophy ontology in business research can be defined as the science or study of being and it deals with the nature of reality. This is especially impor tant for the control software. Formally, an ontology is the statement of a logical theory. Ontology evaluation, both from a logical and empirical perspective, has also been recognized as a critical phase in ontologicalengineering. Formal methods are most likely to be applied to safetycritical or securitycritical software and systems, such as avionics software. Software centric innovative methodology for ontology.

Use of semiformal and formal methods in requirement. The knowledge generated during the software development. Removes ambiguity and improves precision to verify that the requirements have been met. Swo is a core o n tology developed based on the work of wang and colleagues 20, and captures that.

Informal ontologies can improve the reliability of software systems by serving as a basis for manual checking of the design against the specification. Methods and goals of philosophical ontology the methods of philosophical ontology are the methods of philosophy in general. A vdm based formal approach, proceeding of iasted international conference on software engineering 20, doi. Ontologies are used for formal representation of domain knowledge. Such theories usually propose axioms about these entities in question, spelled out in some formal language based on some system of formal logic. Ontologies in the software engineering process ceur workshop. Ontology engineering in computer science, information science and systems engineering is a field which studies the methods and methodologies for building ontologies. It has been widely used in many important biological research projects, such as the rice genome project yu, j. Formal modeling aspects related to the ontology models are. Formal ontology distills, filters, codifies and organizes the results of descriptive ontology in either its local or global setting.

Modeling ontologies with software engineering techniques and. In philosophy, the term formal ontology is used to refer to an ontology defined by axioms in a formal language with the goal to provide an unbiased domain and applicationindependent view on reality, which can help the modeler of domain or applicationspecific ontologies information science to avoid possibly erroneous ontological assumptions encountered in modeling largescale ontologies. Integration of functional and interface requirements of an web based software. System ontology and its role in software development.

Ontology and beosin launch first customized formal. In this community, ontology is mainly restricted to the specification of state. Being formal in such a sense therefore means dealing with categories like thing, process. Formal methods in software engineering why formalize. An ontology is the specification of conceptualizations, used to help programs and humans share knowledge. An ontology is a description like a formal specification of a program of the concepts and relationships that can formally exist. Several relevant approaches to applying software engineering techniques to. The use of formal methods approaches can help to eliminate errors early in the design process.

In computer science and information science, an ontology encompasses a representation. Ontology driven architectures and potential uses of the. There is a longitudinal survey nominal data which takes three snapshots of peoples film viewing habits over time. Formal verification ensures the absence of design errors in a system with respect to systems requirements. A set of agents that share the same ontology will be able to communicate about a domain of discourse without necessarily operating on a globally shared theory. According to the tom gruber, an ai specialist at stanford university, the definition of an ontology is as follows. It is especially suited for heavyweight projects e. Our goal is to build a common lexicon of design methods applicable to designers across a range of disciplines and domains, to support practitioners in design talking, or the process of conversing with other designers through a. It has got almost worldwide attention through the work in the semantic web community 1, 17. Ontology swo and the software process ontology spo 10. Pdf towards a formal method for the transformation of ontology.

In the bibliography of ontologies, the adjectives formal, informal and. Due to the emergence of the semantic web vision ontologies have been attracting much attention recently. It is used for the construction of the cochrane linked data vocabulary containing some 400k terms including interventions drugs, procedures etc, populations age, sex, condition, and clinical outcomes. In its original meaning ontology is about what reality is, in fact what being is 2, 3. Ontology driven architectures and potential uses of the semantic. Pdf using ontologies in software engineering and technology. An improved use of this knowledge could lead to maximum payoff in software organisations. Knowledge based applications use ontologies for knowledge sharing, which forms the primary use of ontologies. Formal specification the cochrane core ontology describes the entities and concepts that exist in the domain of evidence based healthcare.

Often an ontology of the domain is not a goal in itself. Wolff claimed that ontology was an a priori discipline that could reveal the essences of things, a view strongly criticized later in the 18th century by david hume and immanuel kant. Problemsolving methods, domainindependent applications, and software agents use ontologies and knowledge bases built from ontologies as data. An ontologybased approach to support formal verification of. On the one hand, this leads to a deeper understanding of the relationships between ontologies. Purpose of using ontologies in software engineering. A software engineering approach, unified process for. An ontology is a formal and explicit specification of a shared conceptualization. The software ontology swo describes software used in research, primarily bioinformatics.

An ontology for software daniel oberle1, stephan grimm2, and ste. The notion of ontology is rather new in software engineering. The relevant techniques are developed through the use of. A largescale representation of abstract concepts such as actions, time. The purpose of formal representation is to help organisations achieve success by modelling successful organisations.

Harvesting and reuse of this knowledge is key to success in software organisations. Agile methods offer a number of principles that aim to keep users involved in the process of developing software and enable rapid response to changing requirements whilst also building in consistent quality control checks 32,37. In computer science, specifically software engineering and hardware engineering, formal methods are a. Various languages and techniques for their definition and use. According to this interpretation, formal ontology is formal in the sense used by husserl in his logical investigations. They include the development of theories of wider or narrower scope and the testing and. Aquinas hoboryalenus college and school of computing,national university of singaporehoboryalenus college and school of computing,national university of singapore.

Proceedings of the international conference on formal ontology in. In software development, formal methods are mathematical approaches to solving software and hardware problems at the requirements, specification, and design levels. Currently, more than a dozen methods for assessing the quality of ontology are known 5, 6. Those who are familiar with the heritage of software development might correctly suggest that the application of formal logic and declarative knowledge representation in systems and software engineering is not new, holding up much good work in the areas of automated software engineering, formal methods, domain theory, relational algebra and. We say that an agent commits to an ontology if its observable actions are consistent with the definitions in the ontology.