Developing a Conceptual Domain Model: A Business-oriented tutorial

European Space Research and Technology Centre
                  ESTEC room FJ119 ‐ November 10th, 2011
                                 Keplerlaan 1
                         2200 AG Noordwijk
                          The Netherlands

ONTORULE aims to integrate all the required pieces of knowledge and technology, including some that will need be researched and developed within the project, to allow exactly that: the acquisition of ontologies and rules from the most appropriate sources, including natural language documents; their separate management and maintenance; and their transparent operationalisation in IT applications.

The speakers of this tutorial presented the conceptual architecture, partly further developed in ONTORULE, by integrating processes, data, rules, communication, semantics and semantic transactions in one integrated conceptual architecture (using a fact-based formalism). They also described how this architecture can be used in a federated way, integrating various information sources developed independently (e.g. using relational, UML, OWL, XSD). This integrated ONTORULE architecture was compared to the OMG MDA, the ANSI-SPARC Conceptual-Logical-Physical architecture and the ECSS-E-TM-10-23A Space System Data Repository concept.

Agenda

• 09:00 - 09:15 Opening
• 09:15 - 10:00 ONTORULE high level introduction
• 10:00 - 10:15 Coffee break
• 10:15 - 11:30 The Conceptual ONTORULE architecture: complete integration of processes, data, rules, communication, semantics and semantic transaction - modeling at conceptual, Logical and Physical levels.
• 11:30 - 12:45 Lunch
• 13:00 - 14:15 Modeling at the Conceptual level and model bridging relationships. The development of the OMG RFP for a new standard SIMF (Semantic Information Modeling for Federation): how does it further the aims of ECSS-E-TM-10- 23A?
• 14:15 - 15:15 Break
• 15:15 - 16:30 An illustration of Conceptual Domain Modeling and Model Bridging Relationships.
• 16:30 - 17:30 Discussion (ESA FAMOUS project, OMG SIMF proposal, toward a solution for ECSS-E-TM-10-23, ...)

Topics

• Which problems are solved by a Semantic Transaction that are not solved with XML and XSD?
• How to use logic and natural language in conceptual modeling?
• How to involve the subject matter expert in effective validation of the conceptual model?
• How to transform a Conceptual Domain Model into logical models like relational, UML and OWL?
• Why do we need Model Bridging Relationships?
• Which are the advantages of Conceptual Domain Models?
• How much money can be saved?
• How can the quality of the resulting software be increased?
• What kind of investment is needed?
• Why did it take so long for Conceptual Domain Models to arrive in the mainstream?
• How does Conceptual Domain Modeling relate to important movements in the standards arena?

The slides of the event can be downloaded here.