Defining a formal domain ontology is considered a useful, not to say necessary step in almost every software project. This is because software deals with ideas rather than with self-evident physical artefacts. However, this development step is hardly ever done, as ontologies rely on well-defined and semantically powerful AI concepts such as description logics or rule-based systems, and most software engineers are unfamiliar with these. This book fills this gap by covering the subject of MDA application for ontology development on the Semantic Web. The writing is technical yet clear, and is illustrated with examples. The book is supported by a website.

This book is about a significant step forward in software development. It brings state-of-the-art ontology reasoning into mainstream software development and its languages. Ontology Driven Software Development is the essential, comprehensive resource on enabling technologies, consistency checking and process guidance for ontology-driven software development (ODSD). It demonstrates how to apply ontology reasoning in the lifecycle of software development, using current and emerging standards and technologies. You will learn new methodologies and infrastructures, additionally illustrated using detailed industrial case studies. The book will help you: Learn how ontology reasoning allows validations of structure models and key tasks in behavior models. Understand how to develop ODSD guidance engines for important software development activities, such as requirement engineering, domain modeling and process refinement. Become familiar with semantic standards, such as the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and the SPARQL query language. Make use of ontology reasoning, querying and justification techniques to integrate software models and to offer guidance and traceability supports. This book is helpful for undergraduate students and professionals who are interested in studying how ontologies and related semantic reasoning can be applied to the software development process. In addition, itwill also be useful for postgraduate students, professionals and researchers who are going to embark on their research in areas related to ontology or software engineering.

Defining a formal domain ontology is considered a useful, not to say necessary step in almost every software project. This is because software deals with ideas rather than with self-evident physical artefacts. However, this development step is hardly ever done, as ontologies rely on well-defined and semantically powerful AI concepts such as description logics or rule-based systems, and most software engineers are unfamiliar with these. This book fills this gap by covering the subject of MDA application for ontology development on the Semantic Web. The writing is technical yet clear, and is illustrated with examples. The book is supported by a website.

This book covers two applications of ontologies in software engineering and software technology: sharing knowledge of the problem domain and using a common terminology among all stakeholders; and filtering the knowledge when defining models and metamodels. By presenting the advanced use of ontologies in software research and software projects, this book is of benefit to software engineering researchers in both academia and industry.

As organizations and research institutions continue to emphasize model-driven engineering (MDE) as a first-class approach in the software development process of complex systems, the utilization of software in multiple domains and professional networks is becoming increasingly vital. Advances and Applications in Model-Driven Engineering explores this relatively new approach in software development that can increase the level of abstraction of development of tasks. This publication covers the issues of bridging the gaps between various disciplines within software engineering and computer science. Professionals, researchers, and students will discover the most current tools and techniques available in the field to maximize efficiency of model-driven software development.

The next enterprise computing era will rely on the synergy between both technologies: semantic web and model-driven software development (MDSD). The semantic web organizes system knowledge in conceptual domains according to its meaning. It addresses various enterprise computing needs by identifying, abstracting and rationalizing commonalities, and checking for inconsistencies across system specifications. On the other side, model-driven software development is closing the gap among business requirements, designs and executables by using domain-specific languages with custom-built syntax and semantics. It focuses on using modeling languages as programming languages. Among many areas of application, we highlight the area of configuration management. Consider the example of a telecommunication company, where managing the multiple configurations of network devices (routers, hubs, modems, etc.) is crucial. Enterprise systems identify and document the functional and physical characteristics of network devices, and control changes to those characteristics. Applying the integration of semantic web and model-driven software development allows for (1) explicitly specifying configurations of network devices with tailor-made languages, (2) for checking the consistency of these specifications (3) for defining a vocabulary to share device specifications across enterprise systems. By managing configurations with consistent and explicit concepts, we reduce cost and risk, and enhance agility in response to new requirements in the telecommunication area. This book examines the synergy between semantic web and model-driven software development. It brings together advances from disciplines like ontologies, description logics, domain-specific modeling, model transformation and ontology engineering to take enterprise computing to the next level.

This book constitutes thoroughly revised and selected papers from the 4th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development, MODELSWARD 2016, held in Rome, Italy, in February 2016. The 17 thoroughly revised and extended papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 118 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: modeling languages, tools and architectures; methodologies, processes and platforms; applications and software development.