Abstract
The paper explains the need for a standard way of defining modelling constructs from different enterprise modelling languages and proposes a template for defining enterprise modelling constructs in a way that facilitates language integration. The template is based on the Bunge-Wand-Weber (BWW) representation model of information systems (IS) and has been used on several existing modelling languages and frameworks. It is illustrated with definitions of constructs from the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The paper focusses on modelling constructs that represent concrete problem domains, i.e., that represent materials rather than concepts, and thus focuses on the concrete parts and aspects of enterprises.
Highlights
To ensure that knowledge captured in enterprise models can be integrated and made available throughout the organisation, it is necessary to enable organisations to integrate more closely the different modelling languages they use
Most of the paper is about the concrete parts and aspects of enterprises, we believe the template and other results of this paper are sufficiently general to apply to concrete problem domains in general
The examples were based on experience from analysing the Unified Modeling Language (UML) in terms of the BWW model in (Opdahl & Henderson-Sellers, 2002) and from analysing a variant of UML, the OPEN Modelling Language (OML) (Firesmith, Henderson-Sellers & Graham, 1997), in Opdahl, Henderson-Sellers and Barbier (1999) and Opdahl and HendersonSellers (2001)
Summary
To ensure that knowledge captured in enterprise models can be integrated and made available throughout the organisation, it is necessary to enable organisations to integrate more closely the different modelling languages they use. Bunge’s ontology is an example of scientific r ealism, meaning that it “identifies reality with the collection of all concrete things, [...] postulates the autonomous existence of the external world, admits that we are largely ignorant of it, and encourages us to explore it” (Bunge, 1999) It is well suited for integrating modelling constructs that represent concrete problem domains, i.e., that represent materials rather than concepts. This paper uses the BWW representation model—called just the BWW model in this paper—as a common ground for defining enterprise and IS modelling constructs in a way that facilitates language integration. The main idea is to provide a standard way of defining modelling constructs in terms of the BWW model, in order to make the definitions cohesive and, learnable, understandable and as directly comparable to one another as possible. We will explain the underlying theory of the paper–the BWW
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