Ontology-based Conceptual Modeling Research Articles

CURIE: Towards an Ontology and Enterprise Architecture of a CRM Conceptual Model

Companies face the challenge of managing customer relationships (CRM) in a context marked by a drastic digital transformation and unbridled evolution of consumer behavior, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The customer is more demanding, has access to the global market and interacts with companies through multiple digital channels, such as email, social networks, mobile apps or instant messaging. In this situation, the success of a CRM implementation highly depends on information technology and the applications used. To harmonize this new business context with the development of information systems (IS), a suitable CRM ontology and enterprise architecture (EA) is needed. While an ontology-based conceptual model provides a unifying framework, aids sharing and reusing knowledge, and facilitates communication within a domain, an EA-based model unequivocally describes, analyzes, and visualizes how an organization should operate from the perspective of business, application, and technology. The purpose of the paper is the proposal of CURIE-O, a CRM OntoUML UFO-based ontology, together with CURIE-EA, a CRM ArchiMate-based EA to serve business managers and IS specialists an updated unifying framework of reference in the CRM domain as well as a highly efficient tool to support application development and maintenance in this changing and increasingly digital context. Modeling has proven to be an essential element to achieve high-performance information systems. In order to apply the ontology and the EA proposed here, the authors developed a CRM task management application prototype that was implemented as a case study in a consulting company. The methodology followed was design science research (DSR), in order to design and validate the artifacts. Within the DSR framework, other complementary research methods have been used, in particular literature research, interviews and focus groups carried out with several hotel chains in Tenerife (Canary Islands). The main existing CRM models in the scientific literature have also been analyzed together with the leading CRM market solutions.

GRALD: an Approach for Goal and Risk Analysis in the Development of Information Systems for the Web of Data

The publication of Linked Data on the Web regarding several application domains leads to new problems related to Requirements Engineering, which needs to take into account aspects related to new ways of developing systems and delivering information integrated with the Web of Data. Tasks such as (functional and non-functional) requirements elicitation and ontology-based conceptual modeling can be applied to the development of systems that publish Linked Data, in order to obtain a better shared conceptualization (i.e., a domain ontology) of the published data. The use of vocabularies is an intrinsic activity when publishing or consuming Linked Data and their choice can be supported by the elicited requirements and domain ontology. However, it is important to assess the risk when choosing external vocabularies, as their use can lead to problems, such as misinterpretation of meanings due to poor documentation, connection timeouts due to infrastructure problems, etc. Thus, risk identification, modeling and analysis techniques can be employed, in order to identify risks and their impacts on stakeholder goals. In this work, we propose GRALD: Goals and Risks Analysis for Linked Data, an approach for modeling goals and risks for information systems for the Web of Data.

Investigation of design and coordination issues in outpatient chemotherapy clinics using an ontology-based conceptual model

In this paper, we develop an ontological model to check the consistency in the design process for identifying potential conflicts and improving communication and coordination in outpatient chemotherapy clinics (OCCs). The paper describes how potential inconsistency might be detected through a conceptual model to account for the context of OCCs using the enterprise engineering approach design and engineering methodology for organisations (DEMO) and reengineering or modification of the inconsistencies can be accomplished. The implications of the developed model revealed guidelines for modelling an ontological representation and automatically identifying problems and conflicts in the design process of the corresponding system. The observed hindrance reflects two decision makers with opposing objectives for the same patient. Our improving suggestion is to provide an information link between the treatment planner and the patient appointment scheduling transaction by which the two actors supply each other with information converging to one statement.

Investigation of design and coordination issues in outpatient chemotherapy clinics using an ontology-based conceptual model

In this paper, we develop an ontological model to check the consistency in the design process for identifying potential conflicts and improving communication and coordination in outpatient chemotherapy clinics (OCCs). The paper describes how potential inconsistency might be detected through a conceptual model to account for the context of OCCs using the enterprise engineering approach design and engineering methodology for organisations (DEMO) and reengineering or modification of the inconsistencies can be accomplished. The implications of the developed model revealed guidelines for modelling an ontological representation and automatically identifying problems and conflicts in the design process of the corresponding system. The observed hindrance reflects two decision makers with opposing objectives for the same patient. Our improving suggestion is to provide an information link between the treatment planner and the patient appointment scheduling transaction by which the two actors supply each other with information converging to one statement.

Multi-level ontology-based conceptual modeling

Since the late 1980s, there has been a growing interest in the use of foundational ontologies to provide a sound theoretical basis for the discipline of conceptual modeling. This has led to the development of ontology-based conceptual modeling techniques whose modeling primitives reflect the conceptual categories defined in a foundational ontology. The ontology-based conceptual modeling language OntoUML, for example, incorporates the distinctions underlying the taxonomy of types in the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) (e.g., kinds, phases, roles, mixins, etc.). This approach has focused so far on the support to types whose instances are individuals in the subject domain, with no provision for types of types (or categories of categories). In this paper we address this limitation by extending the Unified Foundational Ontology with the MLT multi-level theory. The UFO-MLT combination serves as a foundation for conceptual models that can benefit from the ontological distinctions of UFO as well as MLT's basic concepts and patterns for multi-level modeling. We discuss the impact of the extended foundation to multi-level conceptual modeling.

Software Service Adaptation Based on Interface Localisation

The aim of Web services is the provision of software services to a range of different users in different locations. Service localisation in this context can facilitate the internationalisation and localisation of services by allowing their adaption to different locales. The authors investigate three dimensions: (i) lingual localisation by providing service-level language translation techniques to adopt services to different languages, (ii) regulatory localisation by providing standards-based mappings to achieve regulatory compliance with regionally varying laws, standards and regulations, and (iii) social localisation by taking into account preferences and customs for individuals and the groups or communities in which they participate. The objective is to support and implement an explicit modelling of aspects that are relevant to localisation and runtime support consisting of tools and middleware services to automating the deployment based on models of locales, driven by the two localisation dimensions. The authors focus here on an ontology-based conceptual information model that integrates locale specification into service architectures in a coherent way.