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MDA-based Automatic OWL Ontology Development

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Abstract

This paper presents an eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT)-based approach for automatic generation of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) from a UML model. Similar solutions that treat this problem are mostly partial since they do not use full metamodeling potentials. Although they emphasize the notion of the use UML for ontology development and propose necessary transformations into Semantic Web languages (e.g., RDF Schema, DAML, DAML+OIL), their UML models must be further refined using ontology-specialized tool. None of these approaches enables instance modeling and generation of OWL ontologies. In our efforts to make ontological and software engineering techniques closer, we have firstly defined ontology metamodeling architecture using Model Driven Architecture (MDA) concepts. This architecture consists of the Ontology Definition Metamodel defined using Meta Object Facility (MOF) and based on the OWL, as well as the related Ontology UML Profile (OUP). A transformation, that we present here, extends this metamodeling architecture and transforms an ontology from its OUP definition (i.e., XML Metadata Interchange – XMI) into the OWL description. Accordingly, we illustrate how an OUP-developed ontology can be shared with ontological engineering tools (i.e., Protégé).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University Surrey, 2400 Central City, 10153 King George Hwy, Surrey, BC, V3T 2W1, Canada

    Dragan Gašević

  2. FON – School of Business Administration, University of Belgrade, POB 52, Jove Ilića 154, 11000, Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro

    Dragan Djurić & Vladan Devedžić

Authors
  1. Dragan Gašević
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  2. Dragan Djurić
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  3. Vladan Devedžić
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Correspondence to Dragan Gašević.

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Gašević, D., Djurić, D. & Devedžić, V. MDA-based Automatic OWL Ontology Development. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 9, 103–117 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-006-0002-1

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