Extending the Unified Modeling Language for ontology development

Abstract

There is rapidly growing momentum for web enabled agents that reason about and dynamically integrate the appropriate knowledge and services at runtime. The dynamic integration of knowledge and services depends on the existence of explicit declarative semantic models (ontologies). We have been building tools for ontology development based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). This allows the many mature UML tools, models and expertise to be applied to knowledge representation systems, not only for visualizing complex ontologies but also for managing the ontology development process. UML has many features, such as profiles, global modularity and extension mechanisms that are not generally available in most ontology languages. However, ontology languages have some features that UML does not support. Our paper identifies the similarities and differences (with examples) between UML and the ontology languages RDF and DAML+OIL. To reconcile these differences, we propose a modification to the UML metamodel to address some of the most problematic differences. One of these is the ontological concept variously called a property, relation or predicate. This notion corresponds to the UML concepts of association and attribute. In ontology languages properties are first-class modeling elements, but UML associations and attributes are not firstclass. Our proposal is backward-compatible with existing UML models while enhancing its viability for ontology modeling. While we have focused on RDF and DAML+OIL in our research and development activities, the same issues apply to many of the knowledge representation languages. This is especially the case for semantic network and concept graph approaches to knowledge representations.

ENGINEERING AN ONTOLOGY FOR AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS - The OASys Ontology

“…We realised the limitations of UML for ontology development (Baclawski et al, 2002), (Gómez Pérez et al, 2004b), (Gasevic et al, 2006b). Our decisión was based on the fact that our review of ontologies for autonomous systems and software engineering showed the wide use of UML to specify such ontologies (Gasevic et al, 2006a), (Tamma et al, 2005), (Ruiz and Hilera, 2006).…”

Efficient Integration of Complex Information Systems in the ATM Domain with Explicit Expert Knowledge Models

“…Though the semantics of a model is structurally defined by its meta-model, the mechanisms to describe the semantics of the domain are rather limited compared to knowledge representation languages. In addition, MDA-based languages do not have a knowledge-based foundation to enable reasoning (e.g., for supporting QA) [2]. System integration can benefit from the integration with ontology languages such as RDF and OWL [9,10] in various ways, e.g., by reducing language ambiguity, enabling validation and automated consistency checking.…”

Ontology-supported quality assurance for component-based systems configuration

“…However, although the semantics of a model are structurally defined by its metamodel, these mechanisms to describe the semantics of the domain are rather limited compared to knowledge representation languages. In addition, MDA-based languages do not have a knowledge-based foundation to enable reasoning [1]. Software modeling languages and methodologies can benefit from the integration with ontology languages such as RDF and OWL, e.g., by reducing language ambiguity, enabling validation, and automated consistency checking.…”

“…There are reports on using ontologies for software engineering: a) for describing the problem domain; b) for the semantic description of transformations between models in Model-Driven Development (MDD); and c) for QA reasoning on semantic inconsistencies between models [1]. However, we found very little work on ontologies to provide a continuous model for linking different stages of the engineering process of softwareintensive systems.…”