Application of the Ontology Axioms for the Development of OCL Constraints from PAL Constraints
Volume 23, Issue 3 (2012), pp. 369–390
Pub. online: 1 January 2012
Type: Research Article
Received
1 December 2010
1 December 2010
Accepted
1 June 2012
1 June 2012
Published
1 January 2012
1 January 2012
Abstract
Nowadays, ontologies play a central role in many computer science problems such as data modelling, data exchange, integration of heterogeneous data and models or software reuse. Yet, if many methods of ontology based conceptual data modelling have been proposed, only few attempts have been made to ontology axioms based modelling of business rules, which make an integral part of each conceptual data model. In this paper, we present the approach how ontology axioms can be used for business rules implementation. Our proposal we apply for the transformation of PAL (Protege Axiom Language) constraints (ontology axioms), which is based on KIF (Knowledge Interchange Format) and is part of KIF ontology, into OCL (Object Constraint Language) constraints, which are part of a UML class diagram. Z language is used to formalise the proposal and describe the transformation. The Axiom2OCL plug-in is created for automation of the transformation and a case study is carried out.