Method Engineering: A Service-Oriented Approach - Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering - page 335

Fig. 1 SO2M overview

Ontologies

Method
services base

Request

developer

Composition process

Tailored developement method

a collection of services that achieves the request. Both method services descriptions
and requests share a common vocabulary specified in ontologies.
The method services base contains a set of services called method services .A
method service is a reusable unit that contains one or several method fragments to
solve an IS development problem. For example, a method service could specify a
method fragment to construct a class diagram. The method services are described
with a semantic service model. The goal orientation emphasizes service usage and
customer satisfaction. In our approach, method services serve IS developers in
carrying out development tasks.
SO2M uses also task ontologies which provide a common vocabulary for spec-
ifying both method services and developer's requests. There is a need for ontology
when applying search and semantic matching for method services . Ontologies in
SO2M concern the domain of IS engineering. They enable to define a set of terms
relating to four dimensions of IS engineering: the goal ontology L goal , the actor
ontology L act , the process ontology L proc and the product ontology L prod . These
ontologies are inter-dependent; for instance actors from the actor ontology are
related to activities defined in the process ontology.
SO2M is based on a composition process that supports the research, the selection
and the assembly of services to build dynamically development methods tailored
to developer's requirements. The composition process begins with a developer's
request. The request allows the developer to specify a goal to achieve. The compo-
sition process delivers a composition of services that supports goal realization. For
example, the request “Specify requirements” needs a way of specifying informa-
tion systems requirements. The result may be a method based on an UML use case
model or a functional approach. As method services , requests are specified with the
goal ontology.

4 Ontology of Method

This section presents the ontology of method for describing various aspects related
to method services . The ontology of method is composed of four sub-ontologies,
each one is related to a type of knowledge introduced through principle No 3.