Method Engineering: A Service-Oriented Approach - Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering - page 336

The four ontologies are task ontologies [ 3] for the domain of IS engineering.
These ontologies specify knowledge on IS engineering problems and solutions.
They provide a vocabulary to describe engineering activities domain-independently.
This independence is essential to describe the services at a method level. The second
motivation to use task ontologies is in the possibility to consider developer's needs
as problems to solve. Finally, these ontologies play an important role in matching
requests and available services.

• The goal ontology (L goal ) defines a vocabulary on the IS engineering prob-

lems. These problems correspond to tasks appearing in the development process.
For instance, “Construct a class diagram” is a classical development task in IS
development. IS problems are represented as goals to achieve. L goal provides a
hierarchy of goal classes. Instances of this ontology are used to define both the
goals of method services and developers' requests. Goals are structured with a
verb and an object. Figure 2 shows a fragment of the goal ontology L goal .

• The actor ontology (L act ) defines roles for the actors involved in IS process

development. These roles correspond to functions played by actors within the
development. Instances of this ontology are used in service specification to
indicate the actors who are concerned by the service.

• The process ontology (L proc ) defines a common terminology for the descrip-

tion of the engineering activities (and their organization). This ontology is, in
particular, used in service specification to describe the control constructs of
processes.

•

The product ontology (L prod ) defines a common vocabulary for characterizing all
the artifacts used and produced during IS engineering. Artifacts correspond to
objects necessary during process execution. This ontology is used, in particular,
to specify inputs and outputs of the processes.

Legend :

Goal

aggregation or
specialization
relationship

instanciation

Verb Object

identify

Knowledge
acquisition

Reuse

define

modify

Information Estimation

Documentation Refinement test

research

validate

Configuration
Optimization

Decision

consult

Creation

detail

describe

customize

choose

create

improve construct

Fig. 2 Fragment of the goal ontology