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ExpO: Towards Explaining Ontology-Driven Conceptual Models

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Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS 2024)

Abstract

Ontology-driven conceptual models play an explanatory role in complex and critical domains. However, since those models may consist of a large number of elements, including concepts, relations and sub-diagrams, their reuse or adaptation requires significant efforts. While conceptual model engineers tend to be biased against the removal of information from the models, general users struggle to fully understand them. The paper describes ExpO—a prototype that addresses this trade-off by providing three components: (1) an API that implements model transformations, (2) a software plugin aimed at modelers working with the language OntoUML, and (3) a web application for model exploration mostly designed for domain experts. We describe characteristics of every component and specify scenarios of possible usages.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.visual-paradigm.com.

  2. 2.

    https://github.com/OntoUML/ontouml-vp-plugin.

  3. 3.

    http://protege.stanford.edu.

  4. 4.

    https://protegewiki.stanford.edu/wiki/OntoGraf.

  5. 5.

    http://vowl.visualdataweb.org/webvowl.html.

  6. 6.

    https://imld.de/en/research/research-projects/evonne.

  7. 7.

    Use https://w3id.org/ExpO/expose/health to check if the server is accepting requests.

  8. 8.

    The full documentation can be found in the corresponding folder of the project on https://w3id.org/ExpO/github and on https://w3id.org/ExpO/expose/docs.

  9. 9.

    https://docs.github.com/en/rest?apiVersion=2022-11-28.

  10. 10.

    https://en.wiktionary.org.

  11. 11.

    https://w3id.org/ExpO/plugin.

  12. 12.

    https://w3id.org/ExpO.

  13. 13.

    https://react.dev.

  14. 14.

    https://danielcaldas.github.io/react-d3-graph.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been partially supported by the Province of Bolzano and DFG through the project D2G2 (DFG grant n. 500249124), by the HEU project CyclOps (grant agreement n. 101135513), and by the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP), funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

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Romanenko, E., Calvanese, D., Guizzardi, G. (2024). ExpO: Towards Explaining Ontology-Driven Conceptual Models. In: Araújo, J., de la Vara, J.L., Santos, M.Y., Assar, S. (eds) Research Challenges in Information Science. RCIS 2024. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 514. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-59468-7_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-59468-7_3

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