An ontological framework for architecture model integration

Architecture Model Integration is a process of defining correspondences between high-level architecture elements and other software elements from artifacts developed during various phases of product life cycle. A primary purpose of this process of integration is to address the challenges of the semantic gap that results due to scattering of concerns into multiple representations of application domain entities throughout a series of models. An ontological approach aimed to address the semantic gap is presented in this paper. A reference architecture ontology and an architecture knowledge base are the central components of the proposed framework. Around these components, three framework processes namely interpretation, representation, and refinement are integrated. The framework processes are uniformly applied to derive architecture models from artifacts developed during requirements, low-level design, and implementation.