A Survey of the Current State of the Practice in Bridging the Gap Between Engineering Ontologies and Modeling Profiles for Engin
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University of Texas at El Paso ScholarWorks@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2020-01-01 A Survey Of The Current State Of The Practice In Bridging The Gap Between Engineering Ontologies And Modeling Profiles orF Engineering Applications John Artus University of Texas at El Paso Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Industrial Engineering Commons Recommended Citation Artus, John, "A Survey Of The Current State Of The Practice In Bridging The Gap Between Engineering Ontologies And Modeling Profiles orF Engineering Applications" (2020). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 2923. https://scholarworks.utep.edu/open_etd/2923 This is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A SURVEY OF THE CURRENT STATE OF THE PRACTICE IN BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN ENGINEERING ONTOLOGIES AND MODELING PROFILES FOR ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS JOHN GERARD ARTUS Master’s Program in Systems Engineering APPROVED: ______________________________________ Jose F. Espiritu, Ph.D., Chair ______________________________________ Heidi A. Taboada, Ph.D. ______________________________________ Tzu-Liang (Bill) Tseng, Ph.D. ______________________________________ Virgilio Gonzalez, Ph.D. ______________________________________ Stephen Crites, Ph.D. Dean of teh Graduate School A SURVEY OF THE CURRENT STATE OF THE PRACTICE IN BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN ENGINEERING ONTOLOGIES AND MODELING PROFILES FOR ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS by JOHN GERARD ARTUS, BSEE THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE Department of Industrial Manufacturing & Systems Engineering THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO May 2020 Abstract Model-Based Systems Engineering holds the promise of enhancing systems engineering tasks and product quality through better, more efficient exchange of data across tools, personnel, and departments, a higher quality of analysis resulting from greater access to cross-discipline data, better coordination between engineering activities and those of program management, and many other benefits. Yet, there is still no standardized method for achieving commonality of architecture vocabulary across projects, across, companies, across industries such that entities operating in the same domain produce products that speak the same technical language. Some specialized domains, such as the Department of Defense (DoD), have developed Architecture Frameworks (AF), such as the DoDAF, to establish a level of standardization through enforcement of a profile on the architecture development activities. Still, for other industries, there is no such standardization. Ontologies offer a possible solution to this problem by allowing domain interests to collaborate to construct a domain ontology that can then be transformed into a modeling profile to constrain architectural development activities to use a more common vocabulary. This thesis examines the current state of the practice in industry towards developing a standard methodology for transforming such standardized domain ontologies into modeling profiles. iii Table of Contents Page Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv List of Tables .................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 What is an Ontology? ............................................................................................ 3 1.2 Ontologies As the Source of this Knowledge in Engineering Architectures ........ 4 1.3 Benefits of Using Ontologies for Architecture Development ............................... 4 1.4 What is Preventing the Use of Ontologies in Architectural Development? .......... 5 1.5 Thesis Roadmap .................................................................................................... 6 2 Historical Background of Ontology Development ....................................................... 7 2.1 Vocabulary ............................................................................................................ 9 2.2 Taxonomy.............................................................................................................. 9 2.3 Ontology .............................................................................................................. 10 2.4 State of Readiness in Ontology Development .................................................... 12 3 Historical Background on Use of Ontologies in Engineering .................................... 18 3.1 Use of Ontologies in Engineering in General ..................................................... 18 iv 3.2 Use of Ontologies in Systems Engineering and Manufacturing ......................... 19 3.3 Use of Ontologies Specifically in Software Engineering .................................... 21 3.4 Use of Ontologies Specifically in Systems Engineering ..................................... 27 4 Constructing Ontologies ............................................................................................. 38 4.1 Design Criteria .................................................................................................... 38 4.2 Ontological Formalisms ...................................................................................... 40 4.3 Methods for Modeling Ontologies ...................................................................... 40 4.4 Types of Ontologies ............................................................................................ 42 4.5 Languages for Building Ontologies .................................................................... 44 4.6 Ontology Development Tools ............................................................................. 45 4.7 Ontology Development Methodologies .............................................................. 45 4.8 How Ontology Development Differs from Object-Oriented Design .................. 47 4.9 Important Ontological Terms .............................................................................. 47 4.10 Understanding Classes and Class Hierarchies ................................................. 49 4.11 A Simple Knowledge-Engineering Methodology ........................................... 61 4.12 Ontology Maintenance .................................................................................... 70 5 Bridging the Gap Between Ontologies and Modeling Profiles .................................. 71 5.1 Modeling ............................................................................................................. 71 5.2 Meta-Object Facility ........................................................................................... 73 5.3 UML Profile Extension Mechanism ................................................................... 75 v 5.4 Model Driven Architecture ................................................................................. 77 5.5 Ontology Definition Metamodel ......................................................................... 80 6 Current State of the Practice ....................................................................................... 84 6.1 NASA JPL Integrated Model-Centric Engineering Initiative ............................. 84 6.2 NASA JPL View of Systems Engineering Landscape in the 2010 Timeframe .. 85 6.3 NASA JPL Use of Models as Information Structures ........................................ 89 6.4 NASA JPL Use of Semantic Technologies ......................................................... 91 6.5 Embedding Ontologies in SysML Profiles ......................................................... 96 6.6 Embedding Ontologies in SysML Profiles ....................................................... 101 6.7 NASA JPL Conclusions and Future Work ........................................................ 105 7 Summary ................................................................................................................... 107 8 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 110 References .......................................................................................................................113 Curriculum Vita ..............................................................................................................123 vi List of Tables Table 1: Core Skills Required of a Professional Ontologist ............................................. 15 Table 2: Core Knowledge Required of a Professional Ontologist .................................... 16 Table 3: Elective Skills of a Professional Ontologist ....................................................... 16 Table 4: Elective Knowledge of a Professional Ontologist .............................................. 17 Table 5: Ontology Standard Used at JPL