Using Goal Modeling to Capture Competency Questions in Ontology-based Systems

Most of the available ontology engineering methodologies presuppose the existence of a set of questions which provide the objective and scope of the ontology under development. However, these so-called competency questions are not always clear from start. In this sense, such competency questions are comparable to system requirements, elicited and modeled during the requirements engineering stage of a software development process. Having this in mind, this work proposes the use of the Tropos methodology to help the ontology engineer reason and model competency questions. For that, he should follow the traditional Tropos process, starting with the early requirements activity to analyze the objectives of an organization. This initial stage is followed by the late requirements activity, in which the competency question are captured and linked to the organization’s goals, following the goal modeling process. In this way, we aim at providing a methodology which will consistently drive the ontology engineer in developing an ontology from scratch.