Informática

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Programa de Pós-Graduação em Informática

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A commitment-based reference ontology for service: harmonizing service perspectives
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2014-12-10) Nardi, Julio Cesar; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Falbo, Ricardo de Almeida; Pires, Luiz Ferreira; Amorim, Fernanda Araújo Baião; Guizzardi, Renata Silva Souza; Barcellos, Monalessa Perini
Nowadays, the notion of service has been widely adopted in the practice of economic sectors (e.g., Service, Manufacturing, and Extractive sectors), as well as, in the research focus of various disciplines (e.g., Marketing, Business, and Computer Science). Due to that, a number of research initiatives (e.g., service ontologies, conceptual models, and theories) have tried to understand and characterize the complex notion of service. However, due to particular views of these disciplines and economic sectors, a number of different characterizations of service (e.g., “service as interaction”, “service as value co-creation”, and “service as capability / manifestation of competence”, among others) have been proposed. The existence of these various non-harmonized characterizations, and the focus on a terminological debate about the “service” concept, instead of about the service phenomena from a broad perspective, make the establishment of a unified body of knowledge for service difficult. This limitation impacts, e.g., the establishment of unified conceptualization for supporting the smooth alignment between Business and IT views in service-oriented enterprise architecture (SoEA), and the design and usage of service modeling languages. In this thesis we define a theoretical foundation for service based on the notion of service commitment and claims as basic elements in the characterization of service relations along service life cycle phases (service offer, service negotiation, and service delivery). As discussed in this work, this theoretical foundation is capable of harmonizing a number of service perspectives found in the literature. Such theoretical foundation is specified in a well-founded core reference ontology, named UFO-S, which was designed by adopting a sound ontological engineering apparatus (mainly, a wellfounded ontology representation language, OntoUML, and approaches of model verification and model validation). As a kind of “theory”, UFO-S was applied in the analysis of SoEA structuring principles in order to define a “commitment-based SoEA view”, which remarks social aspects inherent in service relations usually underexplored in widely adopted service-oriented approaches (such as SOA-RM by OASIS, ITIL, and ArchiMate). Based on this, UFO-S was also applied in an ontological analysis of service modeling at ArchiMate’s Business layer. Such ontological analysis showed some limitations concerned to semantic ambiguity and lack of expressiveness for representing service offerings (and type thereof) and service agreements in SoEA. In order to address these limitations, three service modeling patterns (service offering type pattern, service offering pattern, and service agreement pattern) were proposed taking as basis UFO-S. The usefulness of these patterns for addressing these limitations was evidentiated by means of an empirical evaluation. Finally, we can say that, beyond offering a broad and well-founded theoretical foundation for service able to harmonize service perspectives, UFO-S presented benefits as a reference model in the analysis of SoEA structuring principles, and in the (re)design of service modeling languages.
A formal analysis of Identity and Sortality in the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO)
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2021-04-20) Nicola, João Rafael Moraes; Guizzardi, Giancarlo; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3452-553X; http://lattes.cnpq.br/5297252436860003; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8731-291X; http://lattes.cnpq.br/7572689551845981; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9819-3781; http://lattes.cnpq.br/4332944687727598
The Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) is a conceptual framework grounded on principles derived from Ontology discipline of Philosophy, with applications in the field of Software Engineering, specially in Conceptual Modeling, as the semantic reference for the OntoUML modeling language. Among the concepts described in the UFO fragment of endurants (UFO-A), the concept of sortality plays a central role in the classification of UFO substantial universals. However, this concept, and the related concepts of identity and individuality currently lack a systematic formal characterization, hindering their application in the analysis of substantial universals. This research enriches the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) literature with a formal specification for a fragment of UFO-A that allows the characterization of these concepts. This specification is presented in Isabelle/HOL, a logical formalism that allows a machine-assisted verification. We construct a formal framework, based on this specification and on categoric-theoretic concepts through which we propose formal definitions for the concepts of individuality and identity, and, from these definitions, we propose a formal characterization of the concept of sortality. Illustrations and the application of the proposed definitions on the domain of conceptual modeling are also presented.
A framework to support the assignment of active structure and behavior in enterprise modeling approaches
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2012-08-31) Arpini, Rômulo Henrique; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Falbo, Ricardo de Almeida; Araujo, Renata Mendes de
The need to relate the various architectural domains captured in partial descriptions of an enterprise is addressed in virtually all enterprise modeling approaches. One of these domains, namely that of organizational behavior, has received significant attention in recent years in the context of business process modeling and management. Another important domain, that of organizational structure is strongly inter-related with the process domain. While the process domain focuses on how the business process activities are structured and performed, the organizational structure domain focuses on who performs these activities, i.e., which kinds of entities in an organization are capable of performing work. Given the strong connection between the organizational behavior and organizational resources, we argue that any comprehensive enterprise modeling technique should explicitly establish the relations between the modeling elements that represent organizational behavior, called here behavioral elements, and those used to represent the organizational resources (organizational actors) involved in these activities, called here active structure elements. Despite the importance of the relations between these architectural domains, many of the current enterprise architecture and business process modeling approaches lack support for the expressiveness of a number of important active structure allocation scenarios. This work aims to overcome these limitations by proposing a framework for active structure assignment that can be applied to enterprise architecture and business process modeling approaches. This framework enriches the expressiveness of existing techniques and supports the definition of precise active structure assignments. It is designed such that it should be applicable to a number of enterprise architecture and business process modeling languages, i.e., one should be able to use and apply different (enterprise and business process) modeling languages to the framework with minor changes.
A model-based graphical editor for supporting the creation, verification and validation of OntoUML conceptual models
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2010-02-05) Benevides, Alessander Bott; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Guizzardi, Giancarlo; Falbo, Ricardo de Almeida; Costa, Mateus Conrad Barcellos da
This thesis presents a model-based graphical editor for supporting the creation, verification and validation of conceptual models and domain ontologies in a philosophically and cognitively well-founded modeling language named OntoUML. The editor is designed in a way that, on one hand, it shields the user from the complexity of the ontological principles underlying this language. On the other hand, it reinforces these principles in the produced models by providing a mechanism for automatic formal constraint verification, hence ensuring that the created models will be syntactically correct. Assessing the quality of conceptual models is key to ensure that conceptual models can be used effectively as a basis for understanding, agreement and construction of information systems. For this reason, the editor is also capable of automatic generation of model instances by transforming these models into specifications in the logic-based language Alloy. As the generated Alloy specifications include the modal axioms of the foundational ontology underlyingOntoUML, named Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO), then the automatically generated instances will present modal behaviour while being dynamically classified, thereby supporting the validation of the modal meta-properties of the OntoUML types.
A model-driven approach to the conceptual modeling of situations: from specification to validation
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2015-10-28) Sobral, Vinicius Marchandt; Costa, Patrícia Dockhorn; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Pires, Luís Ferreira; Pereira Filho, José Gonçalves
The modeling of situation types for context-aware applications, also called situationaware applications, is, on the one hand, a key task to the proper functioning of those applications. On the other hand, it is also a hard task given the complexity and the wide range of possible situation types. Aiming at facilitating the representation of those types of situations at design-time, the Situation Modeling Language (SML) was created. This language is based partially on rich ontological theories of conceptual modeling and is accompanied by a platform for situation-detection at runtime. Despite the benefits of the availability of this suitable infrastructure, the definition of situation types, being a non-trivial task, can still pose problems that are hardly detected by modelers by manual model inspection. This thesis aims at improving and facilitating the definition of situation types in SML by proposing: (i) the integration between the language and the ontological theories of conceptual modeling by using the OntoUML language, with the purpose of increasing the expressivity of situation type models; and (ii) an approach for the validation of situation type models using a lightweight formal method, aiming at increasing the correspondence between the created models’ instances and the modeler’s intentions. Both the integration and the validation are implemented in a tool for specification, verification and validation of ontologically-enriched situation types.
An ontological theory of the electrocardiogram with applications
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2009-05-13) Gonçalves, Bernardo; Guizzardi, Giancarlo; Pereira Filho, José Gonçalves; Fonseca, Frederico; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade
The fields of Medical- and Bio-informatics are bearing witness of the application of the discipline of Formal Ontology to the representation of biomedical entities and (re-)organization of medical terminologies also in view of advancing electronic health records (EHR). In this context, the electrocardiogram (ECG) defines one of the prominent kinds of biomedical data. As a vital sign, it is an important piece in the composition of the EHR of today, as likely in the EHR of the future. This thesis introduces an ontological analysis of the ECG grounded in the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) and axiomatized in First-Order Logic (FOL). With the goal of investigating the phenomena underlying this cardiological exam, we deal with the sub-domains of human heart electrophysiology and anatomy. We then outline an ECG ontology meant to represent what the ECG is on both sides of the patient and of the physician. The ontology is implemented in the semantic web technology OWL with its SWRL extension. The ECG Ontology makes use of basic relations standardized in the OBO Relation Ontology for the biomedical domain. In addition, it takes inspiration in the Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) and applies the Ontology of Functions (OF). Besides the ECG ontological theory itself, two applications of the ECG Ontology are also presented here. The first one is concerned with the off-line integration of ECG data standards, a relevant endeavor for the progress of Medical Informatics. The second one in turn comprises a reasoning-based web system that can be used to offer support for interactive learning in electrocardiography / heart electrophysiology. Overall, we also reflect on the ECG Ontology as well as on its two applications to provide evidence for benefits achieved with the employment of methodological principles - in terms of both ontological foundations and ontology engineering - in building a domain ontology.
An ontology-based process for domain-specific visual language design
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2017-08-17) Teixeira, Maria das Graças da Silva; Falbo, Ricardo de Almeida; Gailly, Frederik; Guizzardi, Giancarlo; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Campos, Maria Luiza Machado; Poels, Geert; Looy, Amy Van
In het domein van de conceptuele modellering wordt er steeds meer aandacht besteed aan visuele domeinspecifieke modelleertalen en hoe deze talen ondersteuning kunnen bieden bij het representeren van een bepaald domein voor verschillenden belanghebbenden. Bijgevolg is er een absolute noodzaak aan richtlijnen die men kan volgen bij het ontwikkelen van deze domeinspecifieke modelleertalen. Bestaand onderzoek voorziet een aantal richtlijnen maar deze focussen meestal op de abstracte syntax van deze talen en niet op de visuele aspecten (concrete syntax) van deze talen. Er is nochtans een absolute noodzaak aan richtlijnen specifiek voor de ontwikkeleng van de concrete syntax want deze heeft een significante impact op de efficiëntie van de communicatie en probleemoplossende eigenschappen van de met deze talen ontwikkelde conceptuele modellen. De meest gebruikte theorie voor de evaluatie van de concrete syntax van een visuele modelleertaal is de Physics of Notations(PoN). PoN definieert een verzameling principes die men kan gebruiken voor de analyse en ontwerp van een cognitief effectieve visuele notatie voor een modelleertaal. PoN heeft echt ook een aantal tekortkomingen: i) het bevat geen methode die aangeeft hoe de principes moeten gebruikt worden en ii) het helpt niet bij het ontwikkelen van symbolen die overeenstemmen met het domein. In dit PhD project wordt de Physics of Notations Systematized (PoN-S) ontwikkeld en voorgesteld als een oplossing voor de eerste tekortkoming van PoN. PoN-S voorziet een sequentiële set van activiteiten en geeft voor elke activiteit aan welk principe moet worden gebruikt. Bovendien voorziet het ook een groepering voor de verschillende principes die de gebruiker moet helpen bij het gebruik. De tweede tekortkoming wordt in dit PhD project opgelost door gebruik te maken van foundational ontologies. Foundational ontologies worden gebruikt voor het verbeteren van de kwaliteit van zowel de abstracte syntax van een modelleertaal als ook voor het rechtstreeks verbeteren van het conceptueel model. In dit doctoraat wordt het onderzoek van Guizzardi (2013) en meer specifiek het onderzoek rond UFO gebaseerde ontologische richtlijnen gecombineerd met de eerder ontwikkelde verbetering van PoN. Dit resulteert in de Physics of Notations Ontologized and Systematized (PoNTO-S), een systematisch ontwikkelingsproces voor de concrete syntax van visuele modelleertalen waarbij ook rekening wordt gehouden met de ontologische betekenis van de abstracte syntax. Het onderzoek dat uitgevoerd werd in het kader van dit PhD project stemt overeen met een Design Science project met verschillende iteraties die resulteren in verschillende Design Science artefacten die ook werden geëvalueerd. Na de ontwikkeling van PoN-S en PoNTO-S werd er één labo experiment uitgevoerd en werden de artefacten ook deels geëvalueerd door gebruik te maken van twee case studies. Deze studies tonen aan dat PoN-D en PonTO-S nuttig zijn tijdens de ontwikkeling van visuele domeinspecifeke modelleertalen.
Construção de ontologias de tarefa e sua reutilização na engenharia de requisitos
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2009-06-24) Martins, Aline Freitas; Falbo, Ricardo de Almeida; Guizzardi, Giancarlo; Baião, Fernanda Araújo; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade
Nowadays, it is acknowledged that reuse offers an important opportunity to achieve improvements in software development. Greater benefits, however, are achieved by reusing knowledge. Concerning knowledge reuse, two major kinds of knowledge should be considered: domain and task knowledge. For developing knowledge for reuse, models are needed to capture both, and ontologies can be used for this purpose. Domain ontologies describe the vocabulary related to a generic domain, while task ontologies describe the vocabulary related to a generic task. Domain ontologies have been extensively used in several areas in Computer Science, however, the same does not occur with task ontologies. There are few works presenting task ontologies, and there is no uniformity in representing them. Task knowledge involves two different facets: task decomposition and knowledge roles involved in the fulfillment of the subtasks. This work proposes the use of UFO (Unified Foundational Ontology) based UML profiles for representing task knowledge: OntoUML (that concerns class diagrams) modeling the knowledge roles involved and their properties and relations, and E-OntoUML (that concerns activity diagrams) capturing task decomposition and how knowledge roles act in their fulfillment. OntoUML is currently used to represent several domain ontologies. E-OntoUML is a new profile that is proposed here. This work also discusses how task ontologies can be combined with domain ontologies in order to describe the knowledge involved in a class of applications. Finally, since the main goal for capturing knowledge is to allow its reuse and sharing, an approach is proposed for reusing task ontologies in the Requirements Engineering process.
Evolução do método FrameWeb para o projeto de Sistemas de Informação Web utilizando uma abordagem dirigida a modelos
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2016-04-18) Souza, Beatriz Franco Martins; Souza, Vitor Estêvão Silva; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Lima, Fernanda
In a context of increasingly competitive market, the development of Web-based Information Systems (WIS) needs to be more and more dynamic and efficient. Over the years, various Web Engineering (WebE) methods for analysis, design and development of WIS have been proposed. In 2007 the FrameWeb design method was proposed, which defines a basic architecture for the development of WIS based on frameworks. The FrameWeb proposed architecture had focused on a specific set of frameworks available at that time, setting some procedures and a UML profile to create a infrastructure close to the state-of-practice, with the aim of providing productivity gains, especially in the transition between design and development phases, taking advantage of these frameworks, as well as extensive knowledge of UML by modelers and developers. However, from the rise of new techniques, specifications and frameworks implementations it was necessary to revisit the method and evaluate the necessary changes to its continuity. Moreover, from its application, it was noted that the UML-based CASE tools leave with the modeler and his experience the responsibility for the activities to be performed and the correct use of the proposed constructs, giving rise to failures. Observing these issues, this work proposes the redefinition and formalization of the FrameWeb method language through a metamodel called FW15 lead by the use of Model-Driven Development (MDD) techniques. The metamodel FW-15 aims to ensure not only the semantics of FrameWeb language with regard to their framework-independent aspect, but also enable the evolution of the method, as it defines a methodology for creating Frameworks Settings containing the constructs and rules necessary for the creation and application of FrameWeb profiles responsible for its framework-dependent aspects. Thus, this proposal aims to maintain full compatibility with the original method version and at the same time add the necessary resources to new techniques and frameworks that can now be formally added to the method. As an additional contribution, this work presents a simplified prototype tool for designing FrameWeb diagrams and determines the guidelines to evolve this prototype, in order to allow the development of a suitable CASE tool for the method.
Foundations for multi-level ontology-based conceptual modeling
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2016-12-16) Carvalho, Victorio Albani de; Guizzardi, Giancarlo; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Falbo, Ricardo de Almeida; Souza, Vitor Estêvão Silva; Atkinson, Colin; Parreiras, Fernando Silva
Considering that conceptual models are produced with the aim of representing certain aspects of the physical and social world according to a specific conceptualization and that ontologies aim at describing conceptualizations, there has been growing interest in the use of ontologies to provide a sound theoretical basis for the discipline of conceptual modeling. This has given rise to a research area called ontology-based conceptual modeling, with significant advances to conceptual modeling in the last decades. Despite these advances, ontology-based conceptual modeling still lacks proper support to address subject domains that require not only the representation of categories of individuals but also the representation of categories of categories (or types of types). The representation of entities of multiple (related) classification “levels” has been the focus of a separate research area under the banner of multi-level modeling, aiming to address the limitations of the conventional two-level modeling paradigm. Despite the relevant contributions of multi-level modeling and ontology-based conceptual modeling, their combination has not yet received due attention. This work explores this gap by proposing the use of formal theories for multi-level modeling in combination with foundational ontologies to support what we call multi-level ontology-based conceptual modeling. To provide a well-founded approach to multi-level conceptual modeling, we develop a theory called MLT that formally characterizes the nature of classification levels and precisely defines the relations that may occur between elements of different classification levels. In order to leverage the benefits of the use of a foundational ontology to domains dealing with multiple classification levels, we combine the proposed multilevel modeling theory with a foundational ontology. This combination results in a hierarchical modeling approach that supports the construction of multi-level conceptual models in a spectrum of levels of specificity, from foundational ontologies to domain models. To demonstrate the applicability of our multi-level ontology-based conceptual modeling approach, we employ it to develop a core ontology for organizational structure, a domain that spans multiple classification levels. Further, we show how MLT can be used as a reference theory to clarify the semantics and enhance the expressiveness of UML with respect to the representation of multi-level models. The resulting UML profile enables the practical application of MLT.
ML2: an expressive multi-level conceptual modeling language
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2017-09-19) Fonseca, Claudenir Morais; Carvalho, Victorio Albani de; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Falbo, Ricardo de Almeida; Grossmann, Georg
Subject domains are often conceptualized with entities stratified into a rigid two-level structure: a level of classes and a level of individuals which instantiate these classes. Multi-level modeling extends the conventional two-level classification scheme by admitting classes that are also instances of other classes, a feature which can be used beneficially in a number of domains. Despite the advances in multi-level modeling in the last decade, a number of requirements arising from representation needs in subject domains with multiple levels of classification have not yet been addressed in current modeling approaches. In this work, we investigate the requirements for multi-level modeling and propose an expressive multi-level conceptual modeling language dubbed ML2. We follow here a systematic approach based on a strict separation of concerns. First, we capture and formalize the conceptualization underlying multilevel modeling phenomena, called MLT*, building on the multi-level theory called MLT. Second, we employ MLT* as bedrock for the definition of ML2, a textual modeling language that addresses the elicited requirements for multi-level modeling. The proposed language is supported by a featured Eclipse-based workbench which verifies adherence of the ML2 model to the MLT* rules. The capabilities of ML2 are demonstrated by using it to accomplish three distinct modeling tasks: modeling a multi-level challenge proposed in the context of the MULTI 2017 workshop; modeling the concepts from ML2‟s underlying theory, MLT*; modeling the Unified Foundation Ontology (UFO).
Modeling stories for conceptual model validation
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2016-03-21) Braga, Bernardo Ferreira Bastos; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Santoro, Flávia Maria; Guizzardi, Giancarlo
Conceptual modeling is a challenging activity and assessing the quality of conceptual models is key to ensure that they may be used effectively as a basis for understanding, agreement and construction of information systems. A model can be assessed for different types of model quality and in this work we focus on the accuracy of an ontology-based conceptual model in characterizing the conceptualization it is supposed to represent. Validating the accuracy of a model involves understanding the admissible worlds states implied by the model and comparing that to the world states deemed admissible in the domain conceptualization. Previous efforts towards ontology-based conceptual model validation have created a model simulator that allows modelers to be confronted with the consequences of their modeling decisions. The model simulator generates sequences of snapshots of model instances, revealing the dynamics of object creation, change and destruction. Even though these efforts contribute to model assessment, they can be hard to understand and use and this work improves the approach using a mix of informal and formal storytelling. Stories have always been used as means of communicating complex affairs and we argue that they may be used effectively to assess models and reveal modeling decisions. This dissertation proposes an approach to assess conceptual models by creating narratives about a subject domain. These narratives exemplify how concepts of the conceptual model are employed in context. To use them in the existing model simulator, the natural language narratives are formalized as abstract stories using a specification language we define. These abstract stories are then used to guide the model simulation, generating instance diagrams. The natural language narrative is used to provide an intuitive understanding of the meaning of concepts. Comparing Natural Language Narratives to object diagrams that show the instantiation of the formal model allows one to understand how concepts are formalized. Contrasting these guided simulations with the intended conceptualization is the basis for model assessment in this approach.
On the alignment between goal models and enterprise models with an ontological account
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2009-12-16) Cardoso, Evellin Cristine Souza; Guizzardi, Renata Silva Souza; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Guizzardi, Giancarlo
Business process modelling basically comprises an activity whose main goal is to provide a formalization of business processes in an organization or a set of cooperating organizations (Recker, et al., 2006) (van der Aalst, et al., 2003). By modelling an organization’s business processes, it is possible to capture how the organization coordinates the work and resources with the aim of achieving its goals and strategies (Sharp, et al., 2001). Since business processes and goals are intrinsically interdependent, establishing an alignment between the process and the goal domains arises as a natural approach. This thesis reports on a real-life exploratory case study in which we investigated the relationship between the elements of the enterprise (modeled in the ARIS framework) and the goals (modeled in the Tropos framework and modeling language) which are attained by these elements. The case study has been conducted in the Rheumatology Department of a University Hospital in Brazil. In the course of the case study, we have identified the need of splitting this effort into three phases: the elicitation phase (in which goal models and business process models are captured from the organizational domain), the harmonization phase (in which the goal domain is structured for alignment according to the business processes structures that will support it) and the alignment phase (in which the relationships between the goal domain and the elements of the organizational domain are established). In order to investigate the relation between goals and enterprise elements, we propose an ontological account for both architectural domains. We recognize the importance in considering the business process as the means for implementing an enterprise’s strategy, but we do not exclude the remaining enterprise elements. Furthermore, we are concerned with both the identification of the relationships and with a classification for their nature.
Ontologically correct taxonomies by construction: a graph grammar-based approach
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2022-03-25) Batista, Jeferson de Oliveira; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9819-3781; http://lattes.cnpq.br/4332944687727598; https://orcid.org/0000000250264819; http://lattes.cnpq.br/7310031541080438; Souza, Vitor Estevão Silva; https://orcid.org/0000000318695704; http://lattes.cnpq.br/2762374760685577; Sales, Tiago Prince; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5385-5761; http://lattes.cnpq.br/8436504586462308
Taxonomies play a central role in conceptual domain modeling, having a direct impact in areas such as knowledge representation, ontology engineering, and software engineering, as well as knowledge organization in information sciences. Despite this, there is little guidance on how to build high-quality taxonomies, with notable exceptions being the OntoClean methodology, and the ontology-driven conceptual modeling language OntoUML. These techniques take into account the ontological meta-properties of rigidity and sortality of types to establish wellfounded rules on the formation of taxonomic structures. The rigidity meta-property defines whether a type applies essentially or contingently to its instances, while the sortality defines whether a type provides a uniform principle of identity for its instances. In this dissertation, we show how to leverage the formal rules underlying these techniques in order to build taxonomies which are correct by construction. We define a set of correctness-preserving operations to systematically introduce types and subtyping relations into taxonomic structures. In addition to considering the ontological micro-theory of endurant types underlying OntoClean and OntoUML, we also employ the MLT (Multi-Level Theory) micro-theory of high-order types, which allows us to address multi-level taxonomies based on the powertype pattern, in which an entity can be both a type and an instance at the same time. To validate our proposal, we formalize the model building operations as a graph grammar that incorporates both microtheories. A graph grammar is a formal way to specify an initial graph and a set of graph transformation rules. Each graph represents a model, in our case, a taxonomy. A transformation rule consists of preconditions that must be true for a model in order to the rule be applicable, and a set of creation and deletion operations for vertices and edges. The set of models reachable applying the grammar rules is called the grammar language. We apply automatic verification techniques over the grammar language to show that the graph grammar is sound, i.e., that all taxonomies produced by the grammar rules are correct, at least up to a certain size. We also show that the rules can generate all correct taxonomies up to a certain size (a completeness result).
Ontology validation for managers
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2014-10-10) Sales, Tiago Prince; Guizzardi, Giancarlo; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Pinto, Ig Ibert Bittencourt Santana
Ontology-driven conceptual modeling is the activity of capturing and formalizing how a community perceives a domain of interest, using modeling primitives inherited from a foundational ontology. OntoUML is an example of a language that supports such activity, whose design derives from the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). Ontologies, in the sense of reference conceptual models, are useful in many fields. They include model-driven development of software systems, development of knowledge-based application (in the context of Semantic Web), semantic interoperability between information systems, and evaluation of modeling languages, to cite some. Regardless of the application, the quality of an ontology is directly related the quality of the results. Ontology and conceptual model quality encompasses a vast range of criteria. The validation activity aims to improve the domain appropriateness of a model. This means to help improve modeler’s confidence in saying: “I built the right model for my domain”. This thesis presents a validation framework usable by “managers” of the ontology world, i.e. modelers that are not experts in validation, logics and formal methods. The framework contains techniques and tools to help modelers systematically improve the quality of their models without demanding costly learning requirements. We build our framework on two conceptual pillars: model simulation and anti-patterns.
Ontology-based complexity management in conceptual modeling
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2022-09-16) Figueiredo, Guylerme Velasco de Souza; Guizzardi, Giancarlo; http://lattes.cnpq.br/5297252436860003; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-3993; http://lattes.cnpq.br/7421277201683013; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; http://lattes.cnpq.br/4332944687727598; Campos, Maria Luiza Machado; Barcellos, Monalessa Perini; http://lattes.cnpq.br/8826584877205264; Fonseca, Claudenir Morais
Reference conceptual models are used to capture complex and critical domain information. However, as the complexity of a domain grows, so does the size and complexity of the model that represents it. Over the years, different complexity management techniques in large-scale conceptual models have been developed to extract value from models that, due to their size, are challenging to understand. These techniques, however, run into some limitations, such as the possibility of execution without human interaction, semantic cohesion of modules/views generated from the model, and generating an abstracted version of the model so that it can present the essential elements of the domain, among others. This thesis proposes two algorithms to facilitate the understanding of large-scale conceptual models by tackling the problem from two different angles. The first consists in extracting smaller self-contained modules from the original model. The second consists in abstracting the original model, thereby providing a summarized view of the main elements and how they relate to each other in the domain. Both algorithms we propose in this thesis require no input from modelers, are deterministic, and computationally inexpensive. To evaluate the abstraction algorithm for conceptual models, we carried out an empirical research aimed at a comparative analysis taking into account other competing approaches.
Propagação de metapropriedades em padrões de derivação em OntoUML
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2015-10-29) Reginato, Cássio Chaves; Guizzardi, Giancarlo; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Monteiro, Maxwell Eduardo; Costa, Mateus Conrad Barcellos da
Quite often, in conceptual modeling, we need to represent a concept that can only exist in function of inferences applied in other elements. More specifically, Ontological Conceptual models need to represent derived types considering ontological consistence. Hence, in this work we discuss the implementation of derived types in ontology-driven conceptual modeling language regarding the interaction between the meta-properties of the language and the various types of derivation. Moreover, we have extended the OntoUML lightweight editor, providing derivation patterns to facilitate the building of ontological models.
ProScene: uma plataforma para simulação de situações
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2018-11-20) Baldi, Alessandro Murta; Costa, Patrícia Dockhorn; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade
Systems simulation permits that processes in real life to be developed in a controlled environment allowing experimentation over a wide range of conditions. These experiments promote (i) the identification of possible problems that occur over time in a given context, (ii) the training of simulated systems and organisms and (iii) analyzes of possible states that systems can reach. This dissertation explores an aspect not yet found in the literature: the use of simulations that explicitly consider the concept of Situation, named in this work as Situation-Aware Simulations (SiSA). Therefore, SiSAs are designed to simulate the execution of situationbased systems, capable of adapting autonomously to the situation of its users, promoting an innovative form of feedback, close to what happens in reality. The purpose of this work is to facilitate the development of SiSAs and, in this sense, it provides two important contributions: (i) an exploratory research in several simulation tools comparing programming paradigms, performance and characteristics of tools for the development of a SISA, and (ii) new simulations and situations platform called ProScene. ProScene is a hybrid platform, with the features of an agent-oriented simulation tool and a situation management platform. In this way, ProScene has a unique characteristic: it enables the developer to implement situations as agents of the simulation, allowing the visual monitoring of activation and deactivation of situations in their locations.
Representação de capacidades organizacionais em frameworks de defesa: uma abordagem baseada em análise ontológica
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2016-09-27) Miranda, Gabriel Martins; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Guizzardi, Renata Silva Souza; Almeida, Maurício Barcellos
The importance of capabilities in defense domain led to its inclusion in a number of Enterprise Architecture frameworks for this domain, including DoDAF, MODAF and NAF. These frameworks include a number of concepts and language constructs to describe capabilities in an organization. Despite the support for the representation of capabilities in theses frameworks, the notion of capabilities requires a precise conceptualization. A lack of this precision may lead to modeling and communication problems. Thus, this paper presents an ontological analysis of capability-related concepts in these defense frameworks (DoDAF, MODAF and NAF), revealing issues in the underlying conceptualization and in the use of the capability concept. In this analysis, we adopt an ontological account for capabilities based on the notion of dispositions, derived from UFO. UFO helps to understand the constructs of defense frameworks and reveals issues about expressiveness and clarity in representation of capabilities. These issues form a start point to propose a review of the meta-models of defense frameworks, changing naming conventions of some concepts and including new concepts, relations and distinctions necessaries in the reviewed meta-model. Thus, improving the expressiveness and clarity of the language, to represent capabilities. This review allows equip the defense frameworks with appropriate support for representation of capabilities, ensuring the precision, clarity and expressiveness of its language concepts.
Representation of multi-level domains on the web
(Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2016-09-28) Silva, Freddy Brasileiro; Almeida, João Paulo Andrade; Souza, Vitor Estevão Silva; Parreiras, Fernando Silva
Often, subject domains are conceptualized with entities in two levels: a level of classes, and a level of individuals which instantiate these classes. In several subject domains, however, classes themselves may be subject to categorization, resulting in classes of classes (or metaclasses). To represent these domains, one needs to capture not only entities of different classification levels, but also their (possibly intricate) relations. In the domain of biological taxonomies, for instance, a given organism (e.g. Cecil, the lion killed in the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe in 2015) is classified into taxa (such as, e.g., Animal, Mammal, Carnivoran, Lion), each of which is classified by a biological taxonomic rank (e.g., Kingdom, Class, Order, Species). Thus, to represent the knowledge underlying this domain, one needs to represent entities at different (but nonetheless related) classification levels. For example, Cecil is an instance of Lion, since he exhibits those common features. For example, Cecil is an instance of Lion, which is an instance of Species. Species, in its turn, is an instance of Taxonomic Rank. Moreover, when representing these domains, one needs to capture not only entities of different classification levels, but also their (possibly intricate) relations. For example, we would like to state that instances of the genus Panthera must also be instances of exactly one instance of Species (e.g. Lion). The need to support the representation of knowledge domains dealing with multiple classification levels has given rise to an area of investigation called multi-level modeling. We observe that the representation of multi-level domains is challenging in current Semantic Web languages, as there is little support to guide the modeler in producing correct multi-level ontologies, especially because of the nuances in the constraints that apply to entities of different classification levels and their relations. In order to address these representation challenges, we define a vocabulary that can be used as basis for the definition of multilevel ontologies in OWL. This vocabulary is accompanied by integrity constraints to prevent the construction of inconsistent models as well as derivation rules to derive knowledge that is not explicit in the model. We offer a tool that receives as input a domain model, checks its conformance with the proposed integrity constraints and produces an output model containing the original domain model plus derived information. In this process, we employ an axiomatic theory called MLT (a Multi-Level Modeling Theory). We use Wikidata content to demonstrate that the approach can prevent the construction of inconsistent multi-level representations in a realistic setting.

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