Ontological Analyses Reconsidered - A Formal Approach

Ontological analyses have been used in numerous publications to compare existing modelling grammars with an Ontology. Each analysis showed certain deficits of the modelling grammar. Consequently, improvements to these modelling grammars have been proposed. Most ontological analyses, however, are not based on a sound theoretical framework. This theoretical lack renders the results of these analyses incomparable. Thus, working with these results in practise is theoretically questionable. Therefore, in this paper we formalise the ontological analysis approach. This theoretical background allows us to formulate a set of prerequisites an ontological analysis must comply with. This new understanding leads to sound results, which are pairwise comparable. We sketch out intended applications, which are based on our theoretical framework. These applications include combining modelling grammars for a conceptual modelling project and translating models between different grammars. The paper is well embedded into current research as we use existing ontological analyses to show the application of our theoretical findings.