Using Ontologies to Create Object Model for Object-Oriented Software Engineering

Abstract

In this paper we introduce and discuss our approach to creating an object model from a problem domain text description as a basic deliverable of the analysis phase in Object-Oriented Software Engineering using ontologies. For this purpose we first briefly compare object models with ontologies. The object model of a system consists of objects, identified from the text description and structural linkages corresponding to existing or established relationships. The ontologies provide metadata schemas, offering a controlled vocabulary of concepts. At the center of both object models and ontologies are objects within a given problem domain. The both concepts are based on reusability using intensively libraries. The major difference is that while the object model contains explicitly shown structural dependencies between objects in a system, including their properties, relationships and behavior, the ontologies are based on related terms (concepts) only. Because ontology is accepted as a formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization, we can naturally link ontologies with object models, which represent a system-oriented map of related objects. To become usable programming entities these objects should be described as Abstract Data Types (ADTs). This paper addresses ontologies as a basis of a complete methodology for object identification and their modeling as (converting to) ADTs, including procedures and available tools such as CORPORUM OntoExtract and VisualText, which can help the conversion process. This paper describes how the developers can implement this methodology on the base of an illustrative example.