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Athabasca University Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY FEATURE-ORIENTED DOMAIN ANALYSIS FOR SEMANTIC WEB SERVICES BY LISA JULIETTE COX An essay submitted in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE in INFORMATION SYSTEMS Athabasca, Alberta December, 2010 © Lisa Juliette Cox, 2010 ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY The undersigned certify that they have read and recommend for acceptance the integrated project “FEATURE-ORIENTED DOMAIN ANALYSIS FOR SEMANTIC WEB SERVICES” submitted by LISA JULIETTE COX in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE in INFORMATION SYSTEMS. ___________________________ Dragan Gaševi, Ph.D. Supervisor ___________________________ Ebrahim Bagheri, Ph.D. Supervisor Date: _______________________ DEDICATION To Dominique and Zachary i ABSTRACT Interoperability continues to be an open research challenge in the healthcare domain. The lack of interoperability means that information is fragmented across healthcare information silos, hindering integration and effective collaboration between e-health systems, timely access to complete patient medical data and efficiency in healthcare delivery, which are associated with ongoing concerns for patient safety and the cost and quality of healthcare. Information technology needs to be exploited in healthcare to facilitate collaboration between e-health entities’ business processes, enabling access to complete patient medical information, up-to-date drug information and other relevant decision-support systems, thereby enhancing patient safety and reducing or preventing incidences of adverse drug events (ADEs). The main objective of this research is to define a methodology that can be applied to the e-health domain to achieve improvements in interoperability, integration and communication between distributed e- health entities towards reducing incidences of preventable ADEs, which is within the scope of an e-prescription sub-domain. Our proposed methodology is hinged on domain analysis, in particular feature-oriented domain analysis (FODA), in which features which can be seen as concepts and relationships of domain ontologies are linked to conceptual services which direct the design and development of interoperable semantic Web services. Model Driven Development is combined with ontologies in an integrated Service-Oriented Product Line (SOPL) implementation to transform conceptual services into concrete realizations of semantic Web services for improved interoperability and business process automation. Our proposed methodology is - Feature-Oriented Domain ii Analysis for Semantic Web services (FODA4SWS), which is illustrated with an e- prescription case study. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my two supervisors - Dr. Dragan Gaševi and Dr. Ebrahim Bagheri for their guidance and patience throughout my work on this essay, to the staff and faculty of Master of Science in Information Systems (MScIS) and School of Computing and Information Systems (SCIS) at Athabasca University for their support and to the examining committee for their comments on how to further improve this essay. I would also like to thank my mother and aunt for being there for my family, my husband - my rock, who truly understands how hard it was to keep going at times and that “even the strongest have their moments of fatigue” and to my children Dominique and Zachary who had to deal with so much at such a young age. Without your support and understanding, this essay would not have been possible. Thank You! iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................... 1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES and APPROACH .......................................................... 7 ORGANIZATION OF ESSAY .................................................................................. 8 CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................... 9 SOFTWARE PRODUCT LINE (SPL) ..................................................................... 10 Domain Engineering ............................................................................................. 15 Domain Analysis ............................................................................................... 16 Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis (FODA) .................................................... 18 Feature Model ............................................................................................... 21 SPL Contribution .................................................................................................. 24 SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT .............................................................................. 25 MODEL DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT (MDD) ..................................................... 25 MDD Contribution ............................................................................................ 33 SERVICE-ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE (SOA) ................................................. 33 Core SOA Principles ............................................................................................. 36 SOA Capabilities .................................................................................................. 42 Benefits and Challenges of SOA .......................................................................... 43 SOA Contribution ................................................................................................. 45 Service Modeling with SoaML ............................................................................. 46 Web Services ........................................................................................................ 51 v Web Service Architecture Stack ....................................................................... 54 BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (BPM) ................................................... 63 Business Process Modeling................................................................................... 64 BPM Contribution ................................................................................................. 69 THE SEMANTIC WEB ........................................................................................... 70 Semantic Web Services......................................................................................... 74 OWL-S .............................................................................................................. 76 Semantic Web Services Framework (SWSF) ................................................... 78 WSDL-S ............................................................................................................ 79 SAWSDL .......................................................................................................... 79 Stack of Ontologies ........................................................................................... 82 WSMO .............................................................................................................. 83 WSMO Execution Environment (WSMX) ................................................... 87 The Semantic Web Contribution .......................................................................... 88 INTEGRATING KEY TECHNOLOGIES ............................................................... 88 SOA/SPL............................................................................................................... 88 SPL/MDD ............................................................................................................. 89 MDE Integration with other technologies............................................................. 90 SPL/BPM .............................................................................................................. 92 SOA/BPM ............................................................................................................. 92 Integration with Ontologies .................................................................................. 95 ODM (Ontology Definition Metamodel) .......................................................... 95 Integrating Ontologies in Software Development ............................................ 97 vi E-HEALTH PROBLEM DOMAIN ....................................................................... 105 SUMMARY ............................................................................................................ 113 CHAPTER 3 - METHODOLOGY ................................................................................. 115 FODA4SWS Methodology Overview .................................................................... 117 Domain Engineering ........................................................................................... 121 CIM to PIM Transformation ........................................................................... 121 PIM to PIM Transformation ........................................................................... 122 PIM to PSM Transformation .......................................................................... 124 Application Engineering ..................................................................................... 125 TOOL SUPPORT ................................................................................................... 126 CHAPTER 4 - RESULTS and ANALYSIS ................................................................... 130 E-PRESCRIPTION (e-Rx) CASE STUDY ............................................................ 130 EVALUATION......................................................................................................
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