Using Ontologies for Enterprise Architecture Integration and Analysis

Abstract

Enterprise architecture facilitates the alignment between different domains, such as business, applications and information technology. These domains must be described with description languages that best address the concerns of its stakeholders. However, current model-based enterprise architecture techniques are unable to integrate multiple descriptions languages either due to the lack of suitable extension mechanisms or because they lack the means to maintain the coherence, consistency and traceability between the representations of the multiple domains of the enterprise. On the other hand, enterprise architecture models are often designed and used for communication and not for automated analysis of its contents. Model analysis is a valuable tool for assessing the qualities of a model, such as conformance and completeness, and also for supporting decision making. This paper addresses these two issues found in model-based enterprise architecture: (1) the integration of domain description languages, and (2) the automated analysis of models. This proposal uses ontology engineering techniques to specify and integrate the different domains and reasoning and querying as a means to analyse the models. The utility of the proposal is shown through an evaluation scenario that involve the analysis of an enterprise architecture model that spans multiple domains.

A context model for digital preservation of processes and its application to a digital library system

“…Context can range from immediate and local aspects such as the software and hardware supporting the process, to aspects such as the organisation the process is executed in, service providers, and even laws and regulations. Therefore, a meta-model that allows for describing these aspects, relations and dependencies, and their semantics, in a structured manner, was presented in [2]. The meta-model is designed to be adaptable to requirements by different use cases.…”

An Application of Semantic Techniques to the Analysis of Enterprise Architecture Models

“…In order to enable the analysis of EA models using ontologies, the federated model described in [1] is used. It comprises the concept of Upper Ontology (UO), Domain-Specific Ontology (DSO), and Map Ontology (MO).…”

“…In particular, two techniques are targeted to this end: the use of computational inference to reason upon the models and deduce implicit knowledge, and the use of SPARQL to retrieve and manipulate the data stored in the models. The use of these techniques is made on top of a federated model for the integration and analysis of EA models previously published in [1]. In order to demonstrate the application of the techniques, a fictional scenario modelled using the ArchiMate language will be used.…”

An Improved Model Facet Method to Support EA Alignment

“…Further information on alignment metrics can be found in [42]. Antunes et al [43] experimented an ontology approach in the context of EAI. OWL ontologies are extracted from ArchiMate layered models (several layers including the alignment mappings), these ontologies enable to query models to analyse and compare EA models.…”