Posgrado

EDON
A METHOD FOR BUILDING AN ONTOLOGY AS SOFTWARE ARTEFACT

Emiliano Reynares, Mara Laura Caliusco, Mara Rosa Galli Doctorado en Ingeniera Mencin Sistemas de Informacin CIDISI UTN FRSF

Posgrado
AGENDA

1. The problem 2. Overview of EDON 3. EDON Method 4. Experiences from a study case 5. Discussion and future research directions

Posgrado
THE PROBLEM

Recognizing the context Environmental business dynamics Embededness of business rules into software applications

Posgrado
THE PROBLEM

A proposal

Encapsulate business rules in a specific system component

RULES BASES, but
using different attributes to represent the same thing
defining rules based on incompatible notions of the same concept

could affect the rule interaction [Zacharias, 2008]

Posgrado
THE PROBLEM

What about ontologies?

As artefacts intended to explicitly represent the data semantics, could encapsulate business rules while avoiding concept misunderstanding BUT

Ontology building process must be considered in the context of the software development project
Conceptual dynamics issue needs to be tackled [Hepp, 2007] A descriptive path enable to quickly and smoothly evolve through further extended versions of the ontology

Posgrado
EDON Evolutive Development of ONtologies

Pursues three goals

1. To develop from scratch an ontology intended to encapsulate the declarative specification of business rules, supporting accurate and welldefined requirements of a software system

2.
3.

To enable the intertwining of ontology and software development process, facilitating a quick integration of both artefacts
To allow the ontology readily reflect the changes in quickly evolving domains by providing a phase model to evolve through successive versions of the ontology

Posgrado
EDON

Collaborately performed by
1. 2. Domain Experts
DEs interact daily with the problem domain, so they have the knowledge to be modelled

Knowledge Engineers
KEs have the know-how for representing the reality in a way that supports the requirements of a software application

Modelling activities are performed at a high level of abstraction to facilitate the communication between these profiles Short development iterations allow to readily reflect conceptual dynamics and changes in requirements, and both profiles can take advantage of what was learned during the building of earlier versions of the ontology

Posgrado
EDON

In the context of software development process

Posgrado
EDON

The process

Posgrado
EDON

Requirements Selection Process

Posgrado
EDON

Requirements Selection Process in a study case

Functional requirements selected considering two issues: 1. Ontology should provide ontology-based reasoning over business rules 2. Human users of the software application should not interact directly with the underlying ontology but through the software application. Project, Researcher, and Funding agency were considered the core entities A storyboard exposing a functional requirement selected for further development: The software system should allow a researcher to upload a research project pending approval. During this upload, the software system must validate the input data against the rules defined by the agency intended to funding the project

Posgrado
EDON

Ontology Development Process

Posgrado
EDON

Ontology Specification Activity in a study case

Competency Questions [Gruninger et al, 1995] CQ1 CQ2 CQ3 What are the requirements a research project must satisfy to be accepted for a funding agency? What are the requirements the manager of a research project must satisfy? What are the requirements a member of a research project must satisfy?

CQ4

What are the documents evaluated for a funding agency?

Entities Research Project Project Member Researcher Project Manager Funding Agency Evaluation Documents

Posgrado
EDON

Ontology Conceptualization Activity in a study case

Representation of the knowledge associated to the domain entities by using the Lexicon Extended Language (LEL) [Leite et al, 1993]
Representation classified in four categories: object, subject, verb, and state Term described by notion and behavioral response The Project Manager glossary entry Notion It is a Researcher at Category I or II, working in an Execution Unit and managing, at most, two Research Projects. Each Research Project requires, at least, twenty hoursmonth dedication. Behavioural response To develop research projects; To raise funds for the project execution; To generate reports on project status

Posgrado
EDON

Ontology Formalization Activity in a study case

Generation of a base ontology by performing a systematic process [Breitman et al, 2004] It gives an ontological structure to the terminology described in the conceptualization activity The structure is independent of any ontology implementation language but can be mapped into most of them Concepts Relations HasCode HasTitle HasTheme HasManager HasManagerDedication HasReport Axioms The manager is a researcher at category I or II The manager must dedicate, at least, twenty hours-month at each managed project.

Research Project

Posgrado
EDON

Ontology Refinement Activity in a study case

Extending the base ontology by focusing on the formulation of axioms Knowledge obtained from the information sources identified DEs collaborate with the aim of producing the tightest possible model of reality KEs are focused on supporting a set of functional requirements
Axioms If a project report has a 30 day delay, the research project is cancelled If a project report has a 30 day delay, the project manager is suspended If a project report is rejected, the research project is cancelled

Posgrado
EDON

Ontology Implementation Activity in a study case

Encoding of the ontology in an implementation language Evaluation increases along development stages. Three dimensions must be evaluated [Burton-Jones et al, 2005] [Gangemi et al, 2006]: 1. Syntactic dimension, regarding the way the ontology is written 2. Semantic dimension, concerning the consistent modelling of the ontology 3. Functional dimension, related to the intended use of the ontology
SPARQL queries SELECT ?object WHERE { rpms:Manager rpms:has_Category ?object } SELECT ?object WHERE { rpms:agency_evaluate rdfs:range ?object }

Posgrado
EDON

Ontology Alignment Process

Posgrado
EDON

Ontology Aligment Activity in a study case

A new ontology is created by establishing a set of correspondences between entities belonging to two different ontologies [Pavel et al, 2011] A correspondence Co is a 4-uple { id, e1, e2, r} where: Id is the identifier of a given correspondence E1 and e2 are entities of the first and the second ontology, respectively r is the relation holding between e1 and e2 So, the correspondence Co:= {id, e1, e2, r} asserts that the relation r holds between the ontologies entities e1 and e2

Posgrado
EDON

Ontology Aligment Activity in a new iteration

Some new terms One-Man Research Project Project Co-Manager Co-Led Research Project Promoted Project Team r (Relation) Promoted Research Project PhD Fellow e2 (Entity of Ontology 2) One-Man Research Project Co-Led Research Project Promoted Research Project PhD Fellow

e1 (Entity of Ontology 1) Research Project Research Project Research Project Researcher

Manager Manager

Co-Manager PhD Fellow

Posgrado
EXPERIENCES

From a study case

1. Importance of requirements grouping activity
Requirements grouping activity has shown a deep influence in the efficiency of the overall ontology development process

2.

More powerful conceptualization formalism

Although using LEL has proven to be useful to facilitate the communication between the DEs and KEs, a more powerful formalism will improve the way complex business rules are expressed

Software development team highlighted the ability to adapt the overall software system to changing business requirements with minor modifications on the software procedural code

DEs showed interested on the possibility of embed its knowledge in the software system, participating in the process and evolving from knowledge to ontology in a smooth way

Posgrado
DISCUSSION

EDON partly draws from the knowledge developed in several fields

1. Using of competency questions from TOVE Project
[Gruninger et al, 1995]

2.
3. 4.

Definition of iterative life cycle

Definition of orthogonal activities Definition of collaborative work of DEs and KEs from Methontology
[Fernndez-Lpez et al, 1997]

5.
6.

Applying of the main principles of XP agile software methodology

[Beck, 2000]

Using of Application Languages from LELs

[Leite et al, 1993]

7.

Using of a systematic process to evolve from LELs towards an ontology

[Breitman et al, 2004]

Posgrado
DISCUSSION

Distinctive features
1. Development of an ontology intended as a structural conceptual model of an information system, encoding business rules in a declarative way

2.
3.

Aptness to intertwine the software and ontology development process

Ontology development through a phase model that takes advantage of the benefits of agile approaches

Posgrado
FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

Will be focused on the following areas

1. Tracing a set of guidelines
for the correct grouping of requirements will help the experts to improve the requirements selection process

2.

Researching for a more powerful formalism

for ontology conceptualization with the aim to enable the expression of complex business rules in a high level of abstraction

3. 4.

Formulation of a systematic process

to generate the ontology structure from such high level expressions

Acquiring of additional validation cases

Posgrado

Questions?
Emiliano Reynares, Mara Laura Caliusco, Mara Rosa Galli ereynares@frsf.utn.edu.ar mcaliusc@frsf.utn.edu.ar mrgalli@santafe-conicet.gov.ar

CIDISI UTN FRSF