A survey and classification of principles for domain-specific ontology design patterns development

Dynamic, networked service-oriented systems, like those found in manufacturing, logistics, or transportation, require efficient communication of capabilities of their services to enable on-the-fly integrations as a result of changing requirements. Previously, in a case of a manufacturing services network, we have shown the manufacturing service capability (MSC) information communication can be enhanced by introducing a reference MSC ontology – a formal, OWL DL domain-specific ontology. However, consistent and quality development of reference ontology for a large and evolving domain such as manufacturing is a challenge. Therefore, we propose to utilize the notion of OWL ontology design patterns (ODPs) to develop such reference ontology. However, despite the existence of rich design patterns for information modeling in general, there has been no documentation detailing the principles for development of domain-specific ODPs for domain-specific semantic models. This survey paper fills this void by providing a survey and systematic synthesis of applicable principles for domain-specific ODP development in an investigation of the prior works in data modeling, object-oriented software analysis, and ontology modeling design patterns. The paper discusses applicability of the revealed principles in regards to requirements of MSC domain-specific ODPs. Although the paper is concerned with the MSC domain, the findings apply to any domain-specific ODP development. Further research is identified to operationalize principles towards domain-specific ODP development.