Ontological Engineering on Metagraphs Basis

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of ontological engineering of a complex cyber-physical system. An example of such a system is a system that automates processes in higher education institutions. Ontological engineering is the process of designing and developing ontologies that combines two main technologies for designing complex cyber-physical systems - object-oriented and structural analysis. The goals of ontological engineering are to increase the level of integration of information necessary for making management decisions, increase the efficiency of information retrieval, and provide an opportunity for joint processing of knowledge based on a single semantic description of the knowledge space. Ontological engineering is carried out within the framework of the proposed approach to managing complex cyber-physical systems. The resulting ontology should be a convenient and flexible basis for modeling processes and ensuring the functioning of information and analytical processes in a complex system. Approaches to ontological engineering based on graphs are considered. The application of ordinary graphs, hypergraphs and metagraphs is described. The use of metagraphs in the construction of hierarchical ontologies has been substantiated. Metagraphs are considered as the basis for building an applied system ontology. A modification of the metagraph is proposed to include events and system methods in the ontology. This approach to the construction of a metagraph allows to include the process component in the ontological model of the system as an integral part of it, which allows to flexibly and with lower time expenses form process models based on segments of the general ontological model. An example of the implementation of a software-instrumental environment for ontological engineering and further construction of models of processes of a complex cyber-physical system is presented. The technology used to implement the ontological model in the database and the structure of the database for storing the ontology are described.