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Towards Ontology-Driven Information Systems: Redesign and Formalization of the REA Ontology

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Business Information Systems (BIS 2007)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 4439))

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Abstract

It is widely recognized that ontologies can be used to support the semantic integration and interoperability of heterogeneous information systems. Resource Event Agent (REA) is a well-known business ontology that was proposed for ontology-driven enterprise system development. However, the current specification is neither sufficiently explicit nor formal, and thus difficult to operationalize for use in ontology-driven business information systems. In this paper REA is redesigned and formalized following a methodology based on the reengineering extension of the METHONTOLOGY framework for ontology development. The redesign is focused on developing a UML representation of REA that improves upon existing representations and that can easily be transformed into a formal representation. The formal representation of REA is developed in OWL. The paper discusses the choices made in redesigning REA and in transforming REA’s UML representation into a OWL representation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University,  

    Frederik Gailly & Geert Poels

Authors
  1. Frederik Gailly
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  2. Geert Poels
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Witold Abramowicz

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Gailly, F., Poels, G. (2007). Towards Ontology-Driven Information Systems: Redesign and Formalization of the REA Ontology. In: Abramowicz, W. (eds) Business Information Systems. BIS 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4439. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72035-5_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72035-5_19

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-72034-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-72035-5

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