Effective Ontology Development

using UML and Enterprise Architect

TDWG Technical Architecture Group – 17 Oct 2011

Sam Mancarella

Chief Technology Officer

Sparx Systems Pty Ltd

Overview

• Ontologies in Enterprise Architect– MDG Technology for ODM– OWL / RDF

• Challenges of Ontology development– Collaboration, Maintenance, Reuse, Scale– How Enterprise Architect meets them

…but first…

an introduction to Sparx Systems and Enterprise Architect

Sparx Systems

• Established in 1998• Leading provider of modeling tools

– Support for Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)– Support for industry-standard modeling languages, technologies

and frameworks (UML, SysML, BPMN, SoaML, TOGAF)

• Representation in over 60 countries– Value-added resellers (solution providers)– Resellers, Training Partners– Sister companies (Japan, Central Europe, Sth America, NZ)

• Headquartered in Creswick (central Victoria, Australia)

Enterprise Architect

• UML 2.3 powered, team-based modeling environment– Full lifecycle management– Business modeling, Systems engineering, Enterprise

architecture, Requirements management, Software design– Scaleable, High-performance, Multiuser– Visual Execution Analysis, Simulation– Template-based reporting (RTF, HTML)– Code generation/roundtrip support for > 10 languages– Extensible, Customizable

• Over 250,000 active licensees worldwide• Award Winning

Enterprise Architect

MDG Technology for ODM

• Based on Ontology Definition Metamodel– OMG Standard (May 2009) V 1.0– UML Profiles for RDF, OWL– Diagram Types, Construct Toolboxes,

Import/Export Script

«owlOntology»species

+ Definition

+ Facts

tagsnamespaceDefinition.namespacePrefix = speciesnamespaceDefinition.namespaceURI = http://myOntologies.com/species/versionInfo = 1.0

MDG Technology for ODM 2

Toolbox

Diagram Type

Property Definition

Subtyping

Semantic Relationship

MDG Technology for ODM 3

MDG Technology for ODM 4

MDG Technology for ODM 5

• Facts (ie: Things)– owlIndividual Instances of owlClasses

Challenges of Ontology Definition

• Scale

• Ontologies can get really big!– 30,000+ artifacts in NCI Thesaurus

• Difficult to Maintain

• Need to Reuse

Challenges – Scale 2

• What’s changed between revisions?

Challenges – Scale 2

• Model Differencing (add, delete, change, move)

Challenges – Scale 2

• Visual Differencing

Challenges – Scale 3

• How can we reuse what we’ve already done again?

Challenges – Scale 3

• Model Patterns (reusable model fragments)• Copy-paste between multiple instances

Challenges of Ontology Definition

• Teamwork

• Multiple people develop ontologies– SMEs, Analysts, Practitioners, Stakeholders

• All have a say in ontology development

• Need to contribute value

• Need to use the ontology

Challenges – Teamwork 2

• Team Review (conversations about the model, in the model)

Challenges – Teamwork 3

• Fully Customizable Environment

Challenges – Teamwork 4

• Project Planning, Resourcing, Management

Challenges – Teamwork 5

• Project Audit (who changed what, when?)

Conclusion

• MDG Technology for ODM:– RDF & OWL support in Enterprise Architect– owlClass, owlObjectProperty, owlIndividual– Subclassing, Restriction (cardinality, value)– Semantics, Facts

• Ontology development challenges– Scale (reuse, baselines, model comparison, manage change)– Teamwork (team review, customize, audit, project management)

• Enterprise Architect provides best-of-breed tools to:– Mitigate design complexity– Enable greater stakeholder enablement– Ensure design correctness/completeness/relevance

Learn More?• Enterprise Architect 9.1 Trial

http://www.sparxsystems.com/products/ea/trial.html

• Reviewer’s Guide [whitepaper]http://sparxsystems.com/downloads/whitepapers/EAReviewersGuide.pdf

• MDA Overview [whitepaper]http://www.sparxsystems.com/bin/MDA%20Tool.pdf

• Deployment of EA [whitepaper]http://sparxsystems.com/downloads/whitepapers/EA_Deployment.pdf

• Sparx Systems Communityhttp://community.sparxsystems.com/

• SparxSystems YouTube Channelhttp://www.youtube.com/user/SparxSystems