TY - GEN
T1 - Ontology-Driven Software Development
T2 - 15th Formal Ontology in Information Systems Conference, FOIS 2025
AU - Grievink, Guus
AU - Ferreira Pires, Luís
AU - Rebelo Moreira, João Luiz
AU - Rensink, Arend
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 The Authors.
PY - 2025/8/28
Y1 - 2025/8/28
N2 - OntoUML is an ontology specification language for structural conceptual modelling based on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). It extends UML to capture precise semantics about a domain. For OntoUML to add value in software development, its semantics should align with the actual code. To achieve this, in this research we developed an automated, semantics-preserving transformation from OntoUML to Java code that can be used in conjunction with existing OntoUML tools. The transformation is based on the Eclipse Modelling Framework (EMF) and includes parsing of the OntoUML JSON schema, an UML-based object-oriented implementation metamodel, and Java code generation. It has been validated by executing it on publicly available models from the OntoUML model catalogue, of which 82 models were transformed and checked for superficial errors and compatibility of the generated code. For five of these models, the code was manually inspected in more detail. The main contributions of this research are: transformation rules for 12 OntoUML stereotypes; an EMF Ecore metamodel for OntoUML that can be reused in other model transformation projects; and a complete implementation of the OntoUML-to-Java transformation.
AB - OntoUML is an ontology specification language for structural conceptual modelling based on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). It extends UML to capture precise semantics about a domain. For OntoUML to add value in software development, its semantics should align with the actual code. To achieve this, in this research we developed an automated, semantics-preserving transformation from OntoUML to Java code that can be used in conjunction with existing OntoUML tools. The transformation is based on the Eclipse Modelling Framework (EMF) and includes parsing of the OntoUML JSON schema, an UML-based object-oriented implementation metamodel, and Java code generation. It has been validated by executing it on publicly available models from the OntoUML model catalogue, of which 82 models were transformed and checked for superficial errors and compatibility of the generated code. For five of these models, the code was manually inspected in more detail. The main contributions of this research are: transformation rules for 12 OntoUML stereotypes; an EMF Ecore metamodel for OntoUML that can be reused in other model transformation projects; and a complete implementation of the OntoUML-to-Java transformation.
KW - Code generation
KW - Model transformations
KW - Model-driven engineering
KW - Ontology-driven software development
KW - OntoUML
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105021218593
U2 - 10.3233/FAIA250492
DO - 10.3233/FAIA250492
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:105021218593
T3 - Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications
SP - 166
EP - 180
BT - Formal Ontology in Information Systems - Proceedings of the 15th International Conference, FOIS 2025
A2 - Sales, Tiago Prince
A2 - Masolo, Claudio
A2 - Keet, C. Maria
PB - IOS
CY - Amsterdam
Y2 - 4 September 2025 through 12 September 2025
ER -