Business Systems Analysis With Ontologies

"This book shows systems analysts and business analysts how ontological thinking can help them clarify requirements analysis tasks in business systems"--Provided by publisher.

Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS) is the flagship conference of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA). Its interdisciplinary research focus lies at the intersection of philosophical ontology, linguistics, logic, cognitive science, and computer science, as well as in the applications of ontological analysis to conceptual modeling, knowledge engineering, knowledge management, information-systems development, library and information science, scientific research, and semantic technologies in general. As in previous years, FOIS 2014 was a nexus of interdisciplinary research and communication. The current proceedings is divided into four main sections, dealing with: foundations; processes, agency and dispositions; methods and tools; and applications. The last of these covers a broad spectrum of areas, including in particular biology and medicine, engineering, and economy. For the first time in its history, the conference hosted a special track: an ontology competition, the aim of which was to encourage authors to make their ontologies publicly available and to allow them to be evaluated according to a set of predetermined criteria. Papers discussing these ontologies can also be found in this volume. The book will be of interest to all those whose work involves the application of ontologies, and who are looking for a current overview of developments in formal ontology.

Conceptual modeling represents a recent approach to creating knowledge. It has emerged in response to the computer revolution, which started in the middle of the 20th century. Computers, in the meantime, have become a major knowledge media. Conceptual modeling provides an answer to the difficulties experienced throughout the development of computer applications and aims at creating effective, reasonably priced, and sharable knowledge about using computers in business. Moreover, it has become evident that conceptual modeling has the potential to exceed the boundaries of business and computer usage. This state-of-the-art survey originates from the International Seminar on the Evolution of Conceptual Modeling, held in Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, in April 2008. The major objective of this seminar was to look into conceptual modeling from a historical perspective with a view towards the future of conceptual modeling and to achieve a better understanding of conceptual modeling issues in several different domains of discourse, going beyond individual (modeling) projects. The book contains 14 chapters. These were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement from 26 presentations at the seminar and are preceded by a detailed preface providing general insights into the field of conceptual modeling that are not necessarily discussed in any of the chapters but nevertheless aid in conceptualizing the inner structure and coherence of the field. The chapters are grouped into the following three thematic sections: the evolution of conceptual modeling techniques; the extension of conceptual modeling to a service-oriented, peer-to-peer, or Web context; and new directions for conceptual modeling.

"This book provides insights into state-of-the-art modeling languages and methods used for reference modeling. A reference model provides a blueprint for information systems development and analysis. Well-established reference models for industrial, retail and other industries are described"--Provided by publisher.

Computing as a discipline is maturing rapidly. However, with maturity often comes a plethora of subdisciplines, which, as time progresses, can become isolationist. The subdisciplines of modelling, metamodelling, ontologies and modelling languages within software engineering e.g. have, to some degree, evolved separately and without any underpinning formalisms. Introducing set theory as a consistent underlying formalism, Brian Henderson-Sellers shows how a coherent framework can be developed that clearly links these four, previously separate, areas of software engineering. In particular, he shows how the incorporation of a foundational ontology can be beneficial in resolving a number of controversial issues in conceptual modelling, especially with regard to the perceived differences between linguistic metamodelling and ontological metamodelling. An explicit consideration of domain-specific modelling languages is also included in his mathematical analysis of models, metamodels, ontologies and modelling languages. This encompassing and detailed presentation of the state-of-the-art in modelling approaches mainly aims at researchers in academia and industry. They will find the principled discussion of the various subdisciplines extremely useful, and they may exploit the unifying approach as a starting point for future research.

"This book documents high-quality research addressing ontological issues relevant to the modeling of enterprises and information systems in general, and business processes in particular covering both static and dynamic aspects of structural concepts. It provides reference content to researchers, practitioners, and scholars in the fields of language design, information systems, enterprise modeling, artificial intelligence, and the Semantic Web"--Provided by publisher.

The Semantic Web is characterized by the existence of a very large number of distributed semantic resources, which together define a network of ontologies. These ontologies in turn are interlinked through a variety of different meta-relationships such as versioning, inclusion, and many more. This scenario is radically different from the relatively narrow contexts in which ontologies have been traditionally developed and applied, and thus calls for new methods and tools to effectively support the development of novel network-oriented semantic applications. This book by Suárez-Figueroa et al. provides the necessary methodological and technological support for the development and use of ontology networks, which ontology developers need in this distributed environment. After an introduction, in its second part the authors describe the NeOn Methodology framework. The book’s third part details the key activities relevant to the ontology engineering life cycle. For each activity, a general introduction, methodological guidelines, and practical examples are provided. The fourth part then presents a detailed overview of the NeOn Toolkit and its plug-ins. Lastly, case studies from the pharmaceutical and the fishery domain round out the work. The book primarily addresses two main audiences: students (and their lecturers) who need a textbook for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses on ontology engineering, and practitioners who need to develop ontologies in particular or Semantic Web-based applications in general. Its educational value is maximized by its structured approach to explaining guidelines and combining them with case studies and numerous examples. The description of the open source NeOn Toolkit provides an additional asset, as it allows readers to easily evaluate and apply the ideas presented.

"The book deals with the concepts and applications of information systems research, both theoretical concepts of information systems research and applications"--Provided by publisher.