Abstract
The paper discusses experience of using a formal ontology for defining semantics of a modeling language. This is done for an enterprise modeling language called Fractal Enterprise Model (FEM). FEM significantly differs from other enterprise modeling languages; it presents the operational activities of an enterprise using a combination of classes and sets. Although a model in FEM does not explicitly represent such concepts as individuals or time, these concepts should be introduced to formally define FEM’s semantics. Thus, the ontology underlying FEM needs to include more concepts than FEM itself. The paper presents FEM in an informal fashion, and then suggest the first version of an ontology suitable for defining its formal semantics, which consist of the taxonomy of elements, formally defined relationships between them and a set of axioms.
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Notes
- 1.
The difference between a class and a set as an element of a model is substantial, the class represents the properties and/or behavior of any of its instances, while the set represent a collection of things – active or passive. In FEM, a set is defined by a corresponding label functioning as its intensional definition.
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Acknowledgement
The first author’s work was partly supported by the Estonian Research Council (grant PRG1226). The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose comments have helped to improve the text.
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Bider, I., Perjons, E. (2023). Using an Ontology for Defining Semantics of Fractal Enterprise Model. In: Sales, T.P., Araújo, J., Borbinha, J., Guizzardi, G. (eds) Advances in Conceptual Modeling. ER 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14319. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47112-4_21
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