Skip to main content

Advertisement

Springer Nature Link
Log in

Applications of ontologies in requirements engineering: a systematic review of the literature

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Requirements Engineering Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

There is an increase use of ontology-driven approaches to support requirements engineering (RE) activities, such as elicitation, analysis, specification, validation and management of requirements. However, the RE community still lacks a comprehensive understanding of how ontologies are used in RE process. Thus, the main objective of this work is to investigate and better understand how ontologies support RE as well as identify to what extent they have been applied to this field. In order to meet our goal, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify the primary studies on the use of ontologies in RE, following a predefined review protocol. We then identified the main RE phases addressed, the requirements modelling styles that have been used in conjunction with ontologies, the types of requirements that have been supported by the use of ontologies and the ontology languages that have been adopted. We also examined the types of contributions reported and looked for evidences of the benefits of ontology-driven RE. In summary, the main findings of this work are: (1) there are empirical evidences of the benefits of using ontologies in RE activities both in industry and academy, specially for reducing ambiguity, inconsistency and incompleteness of requirements; (2) the majority of studies only partially address the RE process; (3) there is a great diversity of RE modelling styles supported by ontologies; (4) most studies addressed only functional requirements; (5) several studies describe the use/development of tools to support different types of ontology-driven RE approaches; (6) about half of the studies followed W3C recommendations on ontology-related languages; and (7) a great variety of RE ontologies were identified; nevertheless, none of them has been broadly adopted by the community. Finally, we conclude this work by showing several promising research opportunities that are quite important and interesting but underexplored in current research and practice.

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

Access this article

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

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. http://www.sciencedirect.com/.

  2. http://apps.webofknowledge.com.

  3. http://www.scopus.com.

  4. http://link.springer.com/.

  5. http://dl.acm.org/.

  6. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.

  7. http://www.engineeringvillage.com/.

  8. In this paper we also consider requirements management as a requirements phase.

  9. It is worth noting that even though BPM exclusive papers were excluded from this review in the selection process, some papers were included in the review because they used BPM together with other RE modelling styles in the study.

  10. Note that the UML category in this research is different from the UML category of RQ2. In this question UML modelling styles are modelled by the use of ontologies, by contrast, in RQ2, UML (e.g., class diagram) is used as a language to represent ontologies.

References

  1. Abran A, Cuadrado J, Garca-Barriocanal E, Mendes O, Snchez-Alonso S, Sicilia M (2006) Engineering the ontology for the swebok: issues and techniques. In: Calero C, Ruiz F, Piattini M (eds) Ontologies for software engineering and software technology. Springer, Berlin, pp 103–121

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Achimugu P, Selamat A, Ibrahim R, Mahrin MN (2014) A systematic literature review of software requirements prioritization research. Inf Softw Technol 56(6):568–585

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Ahmed E (2008) Use of ontologies in software engineering. In: SEDE, pp 145–150

  4. Anwer S, Ikram N (2006) Goal oriented requirement engineering: a critical study of techniques. In: Software engineering conference, 2006. APSEC 2006. 13th Asia Pacific. IEEE, pp 121–130

  5. Assawamekin N, Sunetnanta T, Pluempitiwiriyawej C (2008) Automated multiperspective requirements traceability using ontology matching technique. In: SEKE. Knowledge Systems Institute Graduate School, pp. 460–465

  6. Baader F, Calvanese D, McGuinness DL, Nardi D, Patel-Schneider PF (eds) (2003) The description logic handbook: theory, implementation, and applications. Cambridge University Press, New York

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Bjorner D (2010) Role of domain engineering in software development-why current requirements engineering is flawed!. In: Pnueli A, Virbitskaite I, Voronkov A (eds) Perspectives of systems informatics, vol 5947. Lecture notes in computer science. Springer, Berlin, pp 2–34

    Google Scholar 

  8. Cappelli C, Baião F, Santoro F, Iendrike H, Lopes M, Nunes V (2007) Uma abordagem de construção de ontologia de domínio a partir do modelo de processos de negócio

  9. Castañeda V, Ballejos L, Caliusco ML, Galli MR (2010) The use of ontologies in requirements engineering. Glob J Res Eng 10(6):2–8

    Google Scholar 

  10. Chen L, Babar MA, Zhang H (2010) Towards an evidence-based understanding of electronic data sources. In: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on evaluation and assessment in software engineering, EASE’10, British Computer Society, Swinton, pp 135–138

  11. Chen X, Jin Z, Yi L (2007) An ontology of problem frames for guiding problem frame specification. In: Zhang Z, Siekmann J (eds) Knowledge science, engineering and management, lecture notes in computer science, vol. 4798. Springer, Berlin, pp 384–395. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-76719-0_38

  12. Corazzon R Notes on the history of ontology, descriptive and formal ontology: a resource guide to contemporary research. www.formalontology.it

  13. Davis R, Shrobe H, Szolovits P (1993) What is a knowledge representation? AI Mag 14(1):17

    Google Scholar 

  14. Dermeval D, Vilela J, Bittencourt II, Castro J, Isotani S, Brito P (2014) A systematic review on the use of ontologies in requirements engineering. In: Brazilian symposium on software engineering (SBES)

  15. Ding W, Liang P, Tang A, van Vliet H (2014) Knowledge-based approaches in software documentation: a systematic literature review. Inf Softw Technol 56(6):545–567

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Dittmann L, Rademacher T, Zelewski S (2004) Performing fmea using ontologies. In: 18th international workshop on qualitative reasoning, Evanston, pp 209–216

  17. Dyb T, Dingsyr T (2008) Empirical studies of agile software development: a systematic review. Inf Softw Technol 50(9–10):833–859

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Dzung DV, Ohnishi A (2009) Ontology-based reasoning in requirements elicitation. In: 2009 seventh iEEE international conference on software engineering and formal methods, pp 263–272

  19. Easterbrook S, Singer J, Storey MA, Damian D (2008) Selecting empirical methods for software engineering research. In: Shull F, Singer J, Sjberg D (eds) Guide to advanced empirical software engineering. Springer, New York, pp 285–311

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. El-Attar M, Miller J (2012) Constructing high quality use case models: a systematic review of current practices. Requir Eng 17(3):187–201

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Elsevier (2014) Information and software technology journal. http://www.journals.elsevier.com/information-and-software-technology/. Accessed 28 March 2014

  22. Falbo R, Nardi J (2008) Evolving a software requirements ontology. In: XXXIV Conferencia Latinoamericana de Informática, Santa Fe, Argentina, pp 300–309

  23. Gasevic D, Kaviani N, Milanovic M (2009) Ontologies and software engineering. In: Staab S, Studer R (eds) Handbook on ontologies, international handbooks on information systems. Springer, Berlin, pp 593–615

    Google Scholar 

  24. Gazevic D, Djuric D, Devedzic V, Selic B (2006) Model driven architecture and ontology development. Springer, Secaucus

    Google Scholar 

  25. Gómez-Pérez A, Fernández-López M, Corcho O (2007) Ontological engineering: with examples from the areas of knowledge management, e-commerce and the semantic web. In: Advanced information and knowledge processing. Springer, Secaucus

  26. Gruber TR (1993) A translation approach to portable ontology specifications. Knowl Acquis 5(2):199–220

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Gruber TR (1995) Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing. Int J Hum Comput Stud 43(5–6):907–928

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Guarino N (1998) Formal ontology in information systems: Proceedings of the 1st international conference June 6–8, 1998, Trento, Italy, 1st edn. IOS Press, Amsterdam

  29. Guizzardi G (2005) Ontological foundations for structural conceptual models. CTIT, Centre for Telematics and Information Technology

  30. Happel HJ, Seedorf S (2006) Applications of ontologies in software engineering. In: 2nd international workshop on semantic web enabled software engineering (SWESE 2006), held at the 5th international semantic web conference (ISWC 2006. Citeseer)

  31. Hernandes EM, Zamboni A, Fabbri S, Thommazo AD (2012) Using GQM and tam to evaluate start—a tool that supports systematic review. CLEI Electron J 15(1):1–13

    Google Scholar 

  32. Horrocks I, Patel-Schneider PF, Boley H, Tabet S, Grosof B, Dean M (2004) Swrl: a semantic web rule language combining owl and ruleml. W3c member submission, World Wide Web Consortium

  33. Hoss A, Carver D (2006) Ontological approach to improving design quality. In: 2006 IEEE aerospace conference, p 12

  34. Huhns M, Singh M (2005) Service-oriented computing: key concepts and principles. Internet Comput IEEE 9(1):75–81. doi:10.1109/MIC.2005.21

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Ivarsson M, Gorschek T (2009) Technology transfer decision support in requirements engineering research: a systematic review of REj. Requir Eng 14(3):155–175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Janetzko R (2009) Applying ontology for checking of requirements specification. Master’s thesis, Faculty of Computer Science, TU Chemnitz

  37. Kaiya H, Saeki M (2006) Using domain ontology as domain knowledge for requirements elicitation. In: 14th IEEE international conference, requirements engineering, pp 189–198. doi:10.1109/RE.2006.72

  38. Kassab M, Ormandjieva O, Daneva M (2009) An ontology based approach to non-functional requirements conceptualization. In: Fourth international conference on software engineering advances, 2009. ICSEA ’09, pp 299–308

  39. Kitchenham B, Charters S (2007) Guidelines for performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering. In: Technical report EBSE 2007–001, Keele University and Durham University Joint Report

  40. Kossmann M, Odeh M (2010) Ontology-driven requirements engineering-a case study of ontoREM in the aerospace context. In: 20th Annual International Symposium of the International Council on Systems Engineering, vol 2., INCOSE 2010IL, Chicago, pp 1000–1012

  41. Kotonya G, Sommerville I (1998) Requirements engineering—processes and techniques. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  42. van Lamsweerde A (2001) Goal-oriented requirements engineering: a guided tour. In: Proceedings of fifth IEEE international symposium on requirements engineering, 2001, pp 249–262

  43. LAPES (2014) Start-state of the art through systematic review tool. http://lapes.dc.ufscar.br/tools/start_tool. Accessed October 2013

  44. Lee SW, Gandhi RA (2006) Requirements as enablers for software assurance. CrossTalk J Def 19(12):20–24

    Google Scholar 

  45. Liu CL (2009) Ontology-based requirements conflicts analysis in activity diagrams. In: Computational science and its applications-ICCSA 2009. Springer, New York, pp 1–12

  46. López C, Cysneiros L, Astudillo H (2008) NDR ontology: Sharing and reusing NFR and design rationale knowledge. In: First international workshop on managing requirements knowledge, 2008. MARK ’08, pp 1–10

  47. Mahdavi-Hezavehi S, Galster M, Avgeriou P (2013) Variability in quality attributes of service-based software systems: a systematic literature review. Inform Softw Technol 55(2):320–343. Special Section: Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE), 2011

  48. McGuinness DL, Harmelen FV (2004) Owl web ontology language overview. http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/

  49. Mika P, Akkermans H (2004) Towards a new synthesis of ontology technology and knowledge management. Knowl Eng Rev 19:317–345

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Niles I, Pease A (2001) Towards a standard upper ontology. In: Proceedings of the international conference on formal ontology in information systems, vol 2001. FOIS ’01, ACM, New York, pp 2–9

  51. Ouhbi S, Idri A, Fernández-Alemán JL, Toval A Requirements engineering education: a systematic mapping study. Requir Eng 1–20

  52. Pacheco C, Garcia I (2012) A systematic literature review of stakeholder identification methods in requirements elicitation. J Syst Softw 85(9):2171–2181. Selected papers from the 2011 Joint working IEEE/IFIP conference on software architecture (WICSA 2011)

  53. Pan JZ, Staab S, Aßmann U, Ebert J, Zhao Y (eds) (2013) Ontology-driven software development. Springer, Berlin

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  54. Pérez J, Arenas M, Gutierrez C (2009) Semantics and complexity of SPARQL. ACM Trans Database Syst 34:16:1–16:45

    Article  Google Scholar 

  55. Petersen K, Feldt R, Mujtaba S, Mattsson M (2008) Systematic mapping studies in software engineering. In: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on evaluation and assessment in software engineering. EASE’08, British Computer Society, Swinton, pp 68–77

  56. Piedra N, Chicaiza J, López J, Martínez O, Caro E (2010) An approach for description of open educational resources based on semantic technologies. In: 2010 IEEE education engineering (EDUCON), pp 1111–1119

  57. Ruiz F, Hilera J (2006) Using ontologies in software engineering and technology. In: Calero C, Ruiz F, Piattini M (eds) Ontologies for software engineering and software technology. Springer, Berlin, pp 49–102

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  58. Selby RW (2007) Software engineering: Barry W. Boehm’s lifetime contributions to software development, management, and research (practitioners). Wiley-IEEE Computer Society Pr, Canada

  59. Shibaoka M, Kaiya H, Saeki M (2007) GOORE: goal-oriented and ontology driven requirements elicitation method. Springer, Berlin, pp 225–234

  60. Siegemund K, Thomas EJ, Zhao Y, Pan J, Assmann U (2011) Towards ontology-driven requirements engineering. In: Workshop semantic web enabled software engineering at 10th international semantic web conference (ISWC), Bonn

  61. W3C (2014) W3c semantic web activity. http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/. Accessed April 2014

  62. Wand Y, Weber R (1995) On the deep structure of information systems. Inform Syst J 5(3):203–223

    Article  Google Scholar 

  63. White S (2004) Business process modeling notation (bpmn) version 1.0. technical report, BPMI.org. http://www.bpmn.org/Documents/BPMN%20V1-0%20May%203%202004.pdf

  64. Wohlin C, Runeson P, Höst M, Ohlsson MC, Regnell B, Wesslén A (2000) Experimentation in software engineering: an introduction. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  65. Wooldridgey M, Ciancarini P (2001) Agent-oriented software engineering: The state of the art. In: Ciancarini P, Wooldridge M (eds) Agent-oriented software engineering, vol 1957. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1957. Springer, Berlin, pp 1–28

    Google Scholar 

  66. Yue T, Briand LC, Labiche Y (2011) A systematic review of transformation approaches between user requirements and analysis models. Requir Eng 16(2):75–99

    Article  Google Scholar 

Systematic Literature Review References

  1. Balushi Al, TH, Sampaio PRF, Loucopoulos P (2013) Eliciting and prioritizing quality requirements supported by ontologies: a case study using the ElicitO framework and tool. Expert Syst 30(2):129–151

  2. Anwer Shahzad Ikram N (2008) A process for goal oriented requirement engineering. In: Proceedings of the IASTED international conference on software engineering, SE 2008. Innsbruck, Austria, pp 255–261

  3. Aranda GN, Vizcaino A, Piattini M (2009) Analyzing ontology as a facilitator during global requirements elicitation. In: Proceedings of 2009 4th IEEE international conference on global software engineering, ICGSE 2009. Limerick, Ireland, pp 309–314

  4. Assawamekin N, Sunetnanta T, Pluempitiwiriyawej C (2010) Ontology-based multiperspective requirements traceability framework. Knowledge and Information Systems 25(3):493–522

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Bagheri E, Asadi M, Ensan F, Gašević D, Mohabbati B (2011) Bringing semantics to feature models with safmdl. In: Proceedings of the 2011 conference of the center for advanced studies on collaborative research, CASCON ’11. IBM Corp, Riverton, pp 287–300

  6. Bicchierai I, Bucci G, Nocentini C, Vicario E (2012) An ontological approach to systematization of SW-FMEA. In: Ortmeier F, Daniel P (eds) Computer safety, reliability, and security, vol 7612. Lecture notes in computer science. Springer, Berlin, pp 173–184

    Google Scholar 

  7. Boukhari I, Bellatreche L, Jean S (2012) An ontological pivot model to interoperate heterogeneous user requirements. In: Margaria S, Steffen B (eds) Leveraging applications of formal methods, verification and validation. Applications and case studies, vol 7610. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 344–358

  8. Cardei I, Fonoage M, Shankar R (2008) Model based requirements specification and validation for component architectures. In: 2nd annual IEEE systems conference, 2008, pp 1–8

  9. Castañeda V, Ballejos L, Caliusco ML (2012) Improving the quality of software requirements specifications with semantic Web technologies. In: WER 2012–15th workshop on requirements engineering. CIDISI, UTN, FRSF, Lavaise 610, Santa Fe, Argentina

  10. Castillo I, Losavio F, Matteo A, Boegh J (2010) REquirements, aspects and software quality: the REASQ model. J Object Technol 9(4):69–91

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Chicaiza J, Lopez J, Piedra N, Martinez O, Tovar E (2010) Usage of social and semantic web technologies to design a searching architecture for software requirement artefacts. IET Softw 4(6):407–417

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Daramola O, Sindre G, Moser T (2012) Ontology-based support for security requirements specification process. In: Herrero P, Panetto H, Meersman R, Dillon T (eds) On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2012 Workshops, vol 7567. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 194–206

  13. Daramola O, Stålhane T, Omoronyia I, Sindre G (2013) Using Ontologies and machine learning for hazard identification and safety analysis. In: Maalej W, Thurimella AK (eds) Managing Requirements Knowledge. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 117–141

  14. Diallo MH, Naslavsky L, Alspaugh T, Ziv H, Richardson D (2008) Toward architecture evaluation through ontology-based requirements-level scenarios. In: de Lemos R, Di Giandomenico F, Gacek C, Muccini H, Vieira M (eds) Architecting Dependable Systems, vol 5135. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 225–247

  15. Dzung DV, Ohnishi A (2009) Improvement of quality of software requirements with requirements ontology. In: Proceedings of international conference on quality software. Republic of Jeju, Korea, pp 284–289

  16. Dzung DV, Ohnishi A (2012) A verification method of elicited software requirements using requirements ontology. In: Proceedings of Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference, vol 1. APSECHong Kong, China, pp 553–558

  17. Elahi G, Yu E, Zannone N (2009) A modeling ontology for integrating vulnerabilities into security requirements conceptual foundations. Conceptual Modeling—ER 2009 NA

  18. Farfeleder S, Moser T, Krall A, Stålhane T, Omoronyia I, Zojer H (2011) Ontology-driven guidance for requirements elicitation. In: Antoniou G, Grobelnik M, Simperl E, Parsia B, Plexousakis D, De Leenheer P, Pan J (eds) The semanic web: research and applications, vol 6644. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 212–226

  19. Gailly F, España S, Poels G, Pastor O (2008) Integrating business domain ontologies with early requirements modelling. In: Song I-Y, Piattini M, Chen Y-P, Hartmann S, Grandi F, Trujillo J, Opdahl A, Ferri F, Grifoni P, Caschera M, Rolland C, Woo C, Salinesi C, Zimányi E, Claramunt C, Frasincar F, Houben G-J, Thiran P (eds) Advances in conceptual modeling – challenges and opportunities, vol 5232. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 282–291

  20. Gandhi RA, Lee SW (2011) Discovering multidimensional correlations among regulatory requirements to understand risk. ACM Trans Softw Eng Methodol 20(4):1–37

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Ghaisas S, Ajmeri N (2013) Knowledge-assisted ontology-based requirements evolution. In: Maalej W, Thurimella AK (eds) Managing requirements knowledge. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 143–167

  22. Gröner G, Staab S (2010) Specialization and validation of statecharts in OWL. In: Cimiano P, Pinto H (eds) Knowledge engineering and management by the masses, vol 6317. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 360–370

  23. Guizzardi R, Franch X, Guizzardi G (2012) Applying a foundational ontology to analyze means-end links in the i* framework. In: 2012 Sixth International Conference on research challenges in information science (RCIS), pp 1–11

  24. Guo J, Wang Y, Trinidad P, Benavides D (2012) Consistency maintenance for evolving feature models. Expert Syst Appl 39(5):4987–4998

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Hayashi S, Yoshikawa T, Saeki M (2010) Sentence-to-code traceability recovery with domain ontologies. In: Software engineering conference (APSEC), 2010 17th Asia Pacific, pp 385–394

  26. He H, Wang Z, Dong Q, Zhang W, Zhu W (2013) Ontology-based semantic verification for UML behavioral models. Int J Softw Eng Knowl Eng 23(2):117–145

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Hickey AM, Davis A (2007) An ontological approach to requirements elicitation technique selection. In: Sharman R, Kishore R, Ramesh R (eds) Ontologies, vol 14. Springer, US, pp 403–431

  28. Hoss A, Carver D (2008) Towards combining ontologies and model weaving for the evolution of requirements models. In: Paech B, Martell C (eds) Innovations for requirement analysis. From stakeholders’ needs to formal designs, vol 5320. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 85–102

  29. Hu H, Yang D, Ye C, Fu C, Li R (2010) Detecting interactions between behavioral requirements with OWL and SWRL. World Acad Sci Eng Technol 72:330–336

    Google Scholar 

  30. Innab N, Kayed A, Sajeev ASM (2012) An ontology for software requirements modelling. In: 2012 International conference on Information science and technology (ICIST), pp 485–490

  31. Jin Z, Chen X, Zowghi D (2009) Performing projection in problem frames using scenarios. In: Proceedings of Asia-Pacific software engineering conference. APSEC, Penang, pp 249–256

  32. Kaiya H, Shimizu Y, Yasui H, Kaijiri K, Saeki M (2010) Enhancing domain knowledge for requirements elicitation with Web mining. In: Proceedings of Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference, APSEC, Sydney, pp 3–12

  33. Karwowski K, Wysota W, Wytrȩbowicz J (2009) Computer aided requirements management. In: Nguyen N, Kowalczyk R, Chen S-M (eds) Computational collective intelligence. Semantic web, social networks and multiagent systems, vol 5796. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 389–400

  34. Kassab M, Ormandjieva O, Daneva M (2011) Relational-model based change management for non-functional requirements: approach and experiment. In: 2011 fifth international conference on research challenges in information science (RCIS), pp 1–9

  35. Kitamura M, Hasegawa R, Kaiya H, Saeki M (2009) A supporting tool for requirements elicitation using a domain ontology. In: Filipe J, Shishkov B, Helfert M, Maciaszek L (eds) Software and data technologies, pp 128–140

  36. Kof L, Gacitua R, Rouncefield M, Sawyer P (2010) Ontology and model alignment as a means for requirements validation. In: 2010 IEEE fourth international conference on semantic computing (ICSC), pp 46–51

  37. Kroha P, Janetzko R, Labra JE (2009) Ontologies in checking for inconsistency of requirements specification. In: Third international conference on advances in semantic processing, 2009. SEMAPRO ’09, pp 32–37

  38. Lasheras J, Valencia-García R, Fernández-Breis JT, Toval A (2009) Modelling reusable security requirements based on an ontology framework. J Res Pract Inf Technol 41(2):119–133

    Google Scholar 

  39. Li G, Jin Z, Xu Y, Lu Y (2011) An engineerable ontology based approach for requirements elicitation in process centered problem domain. In: Xiong H, Lee W (eds) Knowledge science, engineering and management, vol 7091. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 208–220

  40. Li Z, Wang Z, Zhang A, Xu Y (2007) The domain ontology and domain rules based requirements model checking. Int J Softw Eng Appl 1(1)

  41. de Lima EJC, Nt JA, Xexeo GB, de Souza JM (2010) ARARA: a collaborative tool to requirement change awarenes. In: 14th international conference on Computer supported cooperative work in design (CSCWD), 2010, pp 134–139

  42. Lima J, Garcia B, Amaral C, Caran G (2011) Building an ontological model for software requirements engineering. In: Cruz-Cunha M, Varajo J, Powell P, Martinho R (eds) ENTERprise Information systems, communications in computer and information science, vol 219. Springer, Berlin, pp 228–237

    Google Scholar 

  43. Liu CL (2010) CDADE: conflict detector in activity diagram evolution based on speech act and ontology. Knowl Based Syst 23(6):536–546

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Liu CL, Yang HL (2012) Applying ontology-based blog to detect information system post-development change requests conflicts. Inf Syst Front 14(5)

  45. López C, Astudillo H, Cysneiros L (2008) Semantic-aided interactive identification of reusable NFR knowledge fragments. In: Meersman R, Tari Z, Herrero P (eds) On the move to meaningful internet systems: OTM 2008 workshops, vol 5333. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 324–333

  46. Machado BN, De Oliveira Arantes L, De Almeida Falbo R (2011) Using semantic annotations for supporting requirements evolution. In: SEKE 2011—proceedings of the 23rd international conference on software engineering and knowledge engineering, pp 185–190. Ontology and Conceptual Modeling Research Group (NEMO), Computer Science Department, Federal University of Espirito Santo, Vitoria

  47. Moser T, Winkler D, Heindl M, Biffl S (2011) Requirements management with semantic technology: An empirical study on automated requirements categorization and conflict analysis. In: Mouratidis H, Rolland C (eds) Advanced information systems engineering, vol 6741. Lecture notes in computer science. Springer, Berlin, pp 3–17

    Google Scholar 

  48. Moshirpour M, Mireslami S, Alhajj R, Far BH (2012) Automated ontology construction from scenario based software requirements using clustering techniques. In: Information Reuse and Integration (IRI), 2012 IEEE 13th International Conference, 8–10 Aug 2012, pp 541–547

  49. Mtibaa A, Gargouri F (2009) A multi-representation ontology for the specification of multi-context requirements. In: Damiani E, Yetongnon K, Chbeir R, Dipanda A (eds) Advanced internet based systems and applications, vol no 4879. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 259–269

  50. Nguyen TH, Vo BQ, Lumpe M, Grundy J (2013) KBRE: a framework for knowledge-based requirements engineering. Softw Qual J 22(1):87–119

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Niemelã E, Evesti A, Savolainen P (2008) Modeling quality attribute variability. In: ENASE 2008—proceedings of the 3rd international conference on evaluation of novel approaches to software engineering. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Kaitovayla 1, 90571 Oulu, pp 169–176

  52. Omoronyia I, Sindre G, Stålhane T, Biff S, Moser T, Sunindyo W (2010) A domain ontology building process for guiding requirements elicitation. In: Wieringa R, Persson A (eds) Requirements engineering: foundation for software quality, vol no 6182. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 188–202

  53. Osis J, Slihte A, Jansone A (2012) Using use cases for domain modeling. In: ENASE 2012—proceedings of the 7th international conference on evaluation of novel approaches to software engineering. Institute of Applied Computer Systems, Riga Technical University, Kalku iela 1, Riga, pp 224–231

  54. Pires PF, Delicato FC, Cóbe R, Batista T, Davis JG, Song JH (2011) Integrating ontologies, model driven, and CNL in a multi-viewed approach for requirements engineering. Requir Eng 16(2)

  55. Polpinij J (2009) An ontology-based text processing approach for simplifying ambiguity of requirement specifications. In: Services computing conference, 2009. APSCC 2009. IEEE Asia-Pacific, pp 219–226

  56. Rashwan A, Ormandjieva O, Witte R (2013) Ontology-based classification of non-functional requirements in software specifications: a new corpus and svm-based classifier. In: IEEE 37th Annual computer software and applications conference (COMPSAC), 2013, pp 381–386

  57. Reinhartz-Berger I, Sturm A, Wand Y (2011) External variability of software: classification and ontological foundations. In: Jeusfeld M, Delcambre L, Ling T-W (eds) Conceptual modeling - ER 2011, vol no 6998. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 275–289

  58. Riechert T, Berger T (2009) Leveraging semantic data wikis for distributed requirements elicitation. In: Proceedings—international conference on software engineering, Vancouver, BC pp 7–13

  59. Saeki M, Hayashi S, Kaiya H (2013) Enhancing goal-oriented security requirements analysis using common criteria-based knowledge. Int J Softw Eng Knowl Eng 23(5):695–720

    Article  Google Scholar 

  60. Schugerl P, Rilling J, Witte R, Charland P (2009) A quality perspective of software evolvability using semantic analysis. In: IEEE international conference on semantic computing, 2009. ICSC ’09, pp 420–427

  61. Souag A, Salinesi C, Wattiau I, Mouratidis H (2013) Using security and domain ontologies for security requirements analysis. In: 2013 IEEE 37th annual computer software and applications conference workshops (COMPSACW), pp 101–107

  62. Wang HH, Damljanovic D, Sun J (2010) Enhanced semantic access to formal software models. In: Dong J, Zhu H (eds) Formal methods and software engineering, vol no 6447. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 237–252

  63. Wang HH, Li YF, Sun J, Zhang H, Pan J (2007) Verifying feature models using OWL. Web Semant Sci Serv Agents World Wide Web 5(2):117–129

    Article  Google Scholar 

  64. Yu E, Liu L, Mylopoulos J (2007) A social ontology for integrating security and software engineering. In: Mouratidis H, Giorgini P (eds) Integrating security and software engineering: advances and future visions. Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, PA, pp 70–106

  65. Zhang Y, Zhang W (2007) Description logic representation for requirement specification. In: Shi Y, Albada G, Dongarra J, Sloot P (eds) Computational science—ICCS 2007, vol 4488. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 4488. Springer, Berlin, pp 1147–1154

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the Brazilian institutions: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) e Fundação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia do Estado de Pernambuco (FACEPE).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Systems and Computing Department, Federal University of Campina Grande, Campina Grande, PB, 58109-900, Brazil

    Diego Dermeval

  2. Campus Arapiraca, Federal University of Alagoas, Penedo, AL, 57200-000, Brazil

    Diego Dermeval

  3. Informatics Center, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, PE, 50.740-560, Brazil

    Jéssyka Vilela & Jaelson Castro

  4. Computing Institute, Federal University of Alagoas, Maceió, AL, 57072-900, Brazil

    Ig Ibert Bittencourt, Patrick Brito & Alan Silva

  5. Institute of Mathematics and Computational Sciences, University of São Paulo, São Carlos, SP, 13566-590, Brazil

    Seiji Isotani

Authors
  1. Diego Dermeval
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jéssyka Vilela
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ig Ibert Bittencourt
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  4. Jaelson Castro
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  5. Seiji Isotani
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  6. Patrick Brito
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  7. Alan Silva
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Diego Dermeval.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Extraction form

See Table 14.

Table 14 Extraction form
Full size table

Appendix 2: Publication sources

See Table 15.

Table 15 Distribution of studies over publication sources
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Dermeval, D., Vilela, J., Bittencourt, I.I. et al. Applications of ontologies in requirements engineering: a systematic review of the literature. Requirements Eng 21, 405–437 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-015-0222-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-015-0222-6

Keywords