W3C’s Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application and enterprise. As the Semantic Web shapes the future of the Web, it becomes more and more important in software engineering and enterprise application development. While existing ontology engineering tools provide a stack of ontology management support and are used successfully in certain domains, there still remains a gap between the ontology engineering tools and the traditional software engineering. For several decades, software engineering has been established on different modeling languages and methodologies such as Unified Modeling Language (UML). The differences in modeling languages and methodologies cause difficulties in enterprise application development involving the Semantic Web technologies. The existing ontology engineering tools provide only an ad hoc approach to bridging this gap with limited functionality and performance. The primary objective of our work is to bridge this gap between two different, but complementary engineering disciplines with a systematic approach. Our approach leverages Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) and Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM), which enable model transformation. This approach allows seamlessly supporting existing models in UML and other languages in Semantic Web-based software development. In addition, it allows exploiting the availability and features of UML tools for creation of vocabularies and ontologies. Furthermore, MDA enables code generation and facilitates software tool development. This paper presents an MDA-based system for ontology engineering. In addition, it presents the entire stack of individual components of the developed ontology engineering tool.
By: Yu Pan; Guotong Xie; Li Ma; Yang Yang; ZhaoMing Qiu; Juhnyoung Lee
Published in: RC23795 in 2005
LIMITED DISTRIBUTION NOTICE:
This Research Report is available. This report has been submitted for publication outside of IBM and will probably be copyrighted if accepted for publication. It has been issued as a Research Report for early dissemination of its contents. In view of the transfer of copyright to the outside publisher, its distribution outside of IBM prior to publication should be limited to peer communications and specific requests. After outside publication, requests should be filled only by reprints or legally obtained copies of the article (e.g., payment of royalties). I have read and understand this notice and am a member of the scientific community outside or inside of IBM seeking a single copy only.
Questions about this service can be mailed to reports@us.ibm.com .