Abstract
The paper presents a comparison of two modelling techniques that can be used to describe an organization as an interconnected set of business processes. The first technique is called Fractal Enterprise Model, which is an invention of the authors of this paper. The second technique is a well-established technique, IDEF0, normally used to present a functional decomposition of an enterprise. The comparison is done based on building a simplified ontology for each technique using UML class diagrams, after which a mapping is established between the concepts of the two ontologies. The discussion that follows analyzes how much of a model designed using one technique can be represented using the other, which is illustrated by an example.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that our formal FEM ontology might look like a metamodel of FEM language (syntax). This is due to FEM elements have fixed (unambiguous) semantics. The same is (partially) true for IDEF0. For a language with more ambiguous semantics, there can be several ontologies dependent on modeling practices, i.e. how the language elements are interpreted. In this case, a metamodel of the language will differ from any of formal ontologies that can be attached to it.
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Bider, I., Perjons, E., Johanneson, P. (2019). Using Ontologies for Comparing Modeling Techniques: Experience Report. In: Guizzardi, G., Gailly, F., Suzana Pitangueira Maciel, R. (eds) Advances in Conceptual Modeling. ER 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11787. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34146-6_16
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