Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Towards Evolvable Ontology-Driven Development with Normalized Systems

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE 2020)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1375))

Abstract

Normalized Systems (NS) enables sustainable software development and maintenance using code generation of evolvable information systems from models of so-called NS Elements. To promote semantic interoperability with other conceptual models, RDF and OWL technologies can be used for knowledge representation in NS as it is common within the Semantic Web and Linked Open Data domains. Previous research resulted in initial NS-OWL bi-directional transformation and a prototype tool for its execution. In this extended paper, these efforts are further elaborated into an evolvable solution based on NS Expanders. The transformation utilizes RDF to encode all domain-specific structural knowledge of an NS model to ensure bi-directionality. In addition, it also maps entities of NS metamodel to OWL concepts to serve as an ontology for underlying data. Because of the metacircular NS metamodel, any NS model including the metamodel itself, can be transformed. Moreover, the transformation of application data to or from RDF is also possible. Having the NS metamodel, NS models, and potentially also data in RDF opens further research possibilities in terms of analysis and integrations. The use of NS Expanders caused that the solution can be easily extended and refined, e.g. when the metamodel is updated. The results of our research are expected to help with the design of real-world information systems, including the NS tooling and the metamodel.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    OntModel is an instance of OWL model in Apache Jena.

References

  1. Anjorin, A., Diskin, Z., Jouault, F., Ko, H.S., Leblebici, E., Westfechtel, B.: BenchmarX reloaded: a practical benchmark framework for bidirectional transformations. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Bidirectional Transformations co-located with The European Joint Conf. on Theory and Practice of Software, BX@ETAPS 2017, Uppsala, Sweden, 29 April 2017. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 1827, pp. 15–30. CEUR-WS.org

    Google Scholar 

  2. Barcelos, P.P.F., dos Santos, V.A., Silva, F.B., Monteiro, M.E., Garcia, A.S.: An Automated Transformation from OntoUML to OWL and SWRL. Ontobras 1041, 130–141 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Bhatia, M., Kumar, A., Beniwal, R.: Ontologies for software engineering: past, present and future. Indian J. Sci. Technol. 9(9), 1–16 (2016). https://doi.org/10.17485/ijst/2016/v9i9/71384

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Braun, P., Marschall, F.: Transforming object oriented models with BOTL. Electron. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci. 72(3), 103–117 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1016/S1571-0661(04)80615-7

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Cicchetti, A., Di Ruscio, D., Eramo, R., Pierantonio, A.: JTL: a bidirectional and change propagating transformation language. In: Malloy, B., Staab, S., van den Brand, M. (eds.) SLE 2010. LNCS, vol. 6563, pp. 183–202. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19440-5_11

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Czarnecki, K., Foster, J.N., Hu, Z., Lämmel, R., Schürr, A., Terwilliger, J.F.: Bidirectional transformations: a cross-discipline perspective. In: Paige, R.F. (ed.) ICMT 2009. LNCS, vol. 5563, pp. 260–283. Springer, Heidelberg (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02408-5_19

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Bruyn, P.: Towards designing enterprises for evolvability based on fundamental engineering concepts. In: Meersman, R., Dillon, T., Herrero, P. (eds.) OTM 2011. LNCS, vol. 7046, pp. 11–20. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25126-9_3

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. De Bruyn, P., Mannaert, H., Verelst, J., Huysmans, P.: Enabling normalized systems in practice – exploring a modeling approach. Bus. Inf. Syst. Eng. 60(1), 55–67 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-017-0510-4

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and others: Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, version 1.1 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Eclipse Foundation: rdf4j (2019). https://rdf4j.org

  11. Gasevic, D., Djuric, D., Devedzic, V., Damjanovi, V.: Converting UML to OWL oOntologies. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on World Wide Web - Alternate Track Papers and Posters, WWW2004, New York, USA, 17–20 May 2004, pp. 488–489. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/1013367.1013539

  12. Guarino, N., Oberle, D., Staab, S.: What is an ontology? In: Staab, S., Studer, R. (eds.) Handbook on Ontologies. IHIS, pp. 1–17. Springer, Heidelberg (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92673-3_0

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Hitzler, P., Gangemi, A., Janowicz, K.: Ontology Engineering with Ontology Design Patterns: Foundations and Applications, Studies on the Semantic Web, vol. 25. IOS Press (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Hitzler, P., Krötzsch, M., Parsia, B., Patel-Schneider, P.F., Rudolph, S., et al.: OWL 2 web ontology language primer. W3C Recomm. 27(11), 123 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Huysmans, P., Verelst, J.: Towards an engineering-based research approach for enterprise architecture: lessons learned from normalized systems theory. In: Franch, X., Soffer, P. (eds.) CAiSE 2013. LNBIP, vol. 148, pp. 58–72. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38490-5_5

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Kawanaka, S., Hosoya, H.: biXid: A Bidirectional Transformation Language for XML, pp. 201–214 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1145/1159803.1159830

  17. Křemen, P., Kouba, Z.: Ontology-driven information system design. IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part C (Appl. Rev.) 42(3), 334–344 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1109/TSMCC.2011.2163934

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Ledvinka, M., Kostov, B., Křemen, P.: JOPA: efficient ontology-based information system design. In: Sack, H., Rizzo, G., Steinmetz, N., Mladenić, D., Auer, S., Lange, C. (eds.) ESWC 2016. LNCS, vol. 9989, pp. 156–160. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47602-5_31

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Mannaert, H., De Cock, K., Uhnak, P.: On the realization of meta-circular code generation: the case of the normalized systems expanders. In: ICSEA 2019, The Fourteenth International Conference on Software Engineering Advances. IARIA (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Mannaert, H., Verelst, J., De Bruyn, P.: Normalized Systems Theory: From Foundations for Evolvable Software Toward a General Theory for Evolvable Design. Koppa, Kermt, Belgium (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  21. NSX bvba NS Foundation (2019). https://primeradiant.stars-end.net/foundation/

  22. Oorts, G., Huysmans, P., De Bruyn, P., Mannaert, H., Verelst, J., Oost, A.: Building evolvable software using normalized systems theory: a case study. In: 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pp. 4760–4769. IEEE (2014). https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2014.585

  23. Pacheco, H., Cunha, A.: Multifocal: a strategic bidirectional transformation language for XML schemas. In: Hu, Z., de Lara, J. (eds.) ICMT 2012. LNCS, vol. 7307, pp. 89–104. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30476-7_6

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  24. RDFLib Team: RDFLib (2019). https://github.com/RDFLib/rdflib

  25. Sadowska, M., Huzar, Z.: Representation of UML Class diagrams in OWL 2 on the background of domain ontologies. e-Informatica 13(1), 63–103 (2019). https://doi.org/10.5277/e-Inf190103

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Salamon, J.S., Reginato, C.C., Barcellos, M.P.: Ontology integration approaches: a systematic mapping. In: Proceedings of the XI Seminar on Ontology Research in Brazil and II Doctoral and Masters Consortium on Ontologies, São Paulo, Brazil, October 1st-3rd, 2018. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 2228, pp. 161–172. CEUR-WS.org (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Suchánek, M., Mannaert, H., Uhnák, P., Pergl, R.: Bi-directional transformation between normalized systems elements and domain ontologies in OWL. In: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering 2020, vol. 2020, pp. 74–85. INSTICC, SciTePress, Prague, Czech Republic, May 2020. https://doi.org/10.5220/0009356800740085

  28. Suchánek, M., Pergl, R.: Evolvability evaluation of conceptual-level inheritance implementation patterns. In: PATTERNS 2019, The Eleventh International Conference on Pervasive Patterns and Applications, vol. 2019, pp. 1–6. IARIA, Venice, Italy, May 2019

    Google Scholar 

  29. Suchánek, M., Pergl, R.: Case-study-based review of approaches for transforming UML class diagrams to OWL and vice versa. In: 22nd IEEE Conference on Business Informatics (CBI 2020), vol. 2020, pp. 270–279. IEEE Computer Society, Antwerp, June 2020. https://doi.org/10.1109/CBI49978.2020.00036

  30. Telnarova, Z.: Transformation of extended entity relationship model into ontology. In: Nguyen, N.T., Hoang, D.H., Hong, T.-P., Pham, H., Trawiński, B. (eds.) ACIIDS 2018, Part II. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 10752, pp. 256–264. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75420-8_24

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  31. The Apache Software Foundation: Apache Jena: A free and open source Java framework for building Semantic Web and Linked Data applications (2019). https://jena.apache.org

  32. Zedlitz, J., Jörke, J., Luttenberger, N.: From UML to OWL 2. In: Lukose, D., Ahmad, A.R., Suliman, A. (eds.) KTW 2011. CCIS, vol. 295, pp. 154–163. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32826-8_16

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The research was performed in collaboration of Czech Technical University in Prague, University of Antwerp, and NSX bvba. The research was supported by Czech Technical University in Prague grant No. SGS20/209/OHK3/3T/18.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Information Technology, Czech Technical University in Prague, Thákurova 9, Prague, Czech Republic

    Marek Suchánek & Robert Pergl

  2. Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, Antwerp, Belgium

    Marek Suchánek & Herwig Mannaert

  3. Normalized Systems Institute, University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, Antwerp, Belgium

    Herwig Mannaert

  4. NSX bvba, Wetenschapspark Universiteit Antwerpen, Galileilaan 15, 2845, Niel, Belgium

    Peter Uhnák

Authors
  1. Marek Suchánek
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Herwig Mannaert
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Peter Uhnák
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Robert Pergl
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marek Suchánek .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar

    Raian Ali

  2. TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Hermann Kaindl

  3. Wrocław University of Economics Institute of Business Informatics, Wrocław, Poland

    Leszek A. Maciaszek

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Suchánek, M., Mannaert, H., Uhnák, P., Pergl, R. (2021). Towards Evolvable Ontology-Driven Development with Normalized Systems. In: Ali, R., Kaindl, H., Maciaszek, L.A. (eds) Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering. ENASE 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1375. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70006-5_9

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70006-5_9

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-70005-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-70006-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics