A Software Modeling Approach to Ontology Design via Extensions to ODM and OWL

ion to represent associations among different concepts (e.g., actors, use case, class, etc.). Underlying these diagrams and modeling concepts is the UML metamodel which is built on top of MOF as given in Figure 2a: M3 is a meta-meta library for defining new metamodels; M2 is at the metamodel layer where models such as UML, ODM, and NeOn (Haase, Rudolph, Wang, & Brockmans, 2005) can be defined; M1 is the domain model instance of an M2 metamodel; and, M0 is the instance of the domain model. Building a metamodel using MOF for specific domain requirements is a tedious task, as the developer has to define the syntax and the semantics of the new entities. To facilitate this process, it is possible to utilize the UML abstraction Profile (Fuentes-Fernández & Vallecillo-Moreno, 2004), where existing UML metamodel elements such as class, association, property, etc., can be extended to build domain specific metamodel elements. UML profile only extends existing UML metamodel features, allowing the profile extension to act as a metamodel itself. In addition to M3 and M2, Figure 2a also shows the transition from the metamodel UML (M2) to a domain model for a university application (M1) applied to a “real” university UConn (M0). Likewise, an ODM, metamodel (M2) can be used to develop a domain model (M1) for Diseases that can then be applied at the domain data layer (M0) for various diseases (e.g., Asthma). Three of the four layers of MOF in Figure 2a (metamodel, domain model, and domain data) can be used to organize a conceptual view of XML Schema, RDF/RDFS schema, and OWL metamodel, as shown in Figure 2b. In the case of XML, the capability of XML Schema Definition (XSD) at the MM layer (XML schema for short) provides predefined schema tags like element, complexType, simpleType, etc. These schema tags are akin to classes, attributes, actors, etc.,