The system building process should start with a model of the relevant part of the real world, but most O-O systems work is concerned with the later stages, taking O-O languages as a given and looking at how to use them to build the system. This article discusses the origin of the object paradigm, and demonstrates the value of beginning with real-world modeling using an O-O approach.

The central theme of this practical book is that we can build much better computer systems if we re-engineer their business information systems. The book provides the reader with the tools, techniques and understanding of object orientation techniques/re-engineering to enable him or her to improve or build business computing/information systems. As well as showing how, this book also shows that information re-engineering can deliver much better systems by helping the reader to understand why and how the benefits are gained. It shows how to actually go about using what has been learned in the book to re-engineer a system. This may be a commercial project taking months or a personal one done over a couple of weekends. It looks at the problems and offers solutions in an easy practical way. This book should be of interest to system designers, analysts and programmers, information systems managers, database designers and IT development managers.

This paper presents a report on work in progress of a Synthesis of (selected) State of the Art Enterprise Ontologies (SSAEO) – which aims to produce a Base Enterprise Ontology to be used as the foundation for the construction of a Core Enterprise Ontology (CEO). The synthesis is intended to harvest the insights from the selected ontologies, building upon their strengths and eliminating – as far as possible – their weaknesses. One of the main achievements of this work is the development of the notion of a person (entities that can acquire rights and obligations) enabling the integration of a number of lower level concepts. In addition, we have already been able to identify some of the common ‘mistakes’ in current enterprise ontologies – and propose solutions.

This paper presents a report on work in progress of a Synthesis of (selected) State of the Art Enterprise Ontologies (SSAEO) – which aims to produce a Base Enterprise Ontology to be used as the foundation for the construction of a Core Enterprise Ontology (CEO). The synthesis is intended to harvest the insights from the selected ontologies, building upon their strengths and eliminating – as far as possible – their weaknesses. One of the main achievements of this work is the development of the notion of a person (entities that can acquire rights and obligations) enabling the integration of a number of lower level concepts. In addition, we have already been able to identify some of the common ‘mistakes’ in current enterprise ontologies – and propose solutions.

The aim of the tutorial is to provide a practical introduction for researchers and practitioners to the BORO methodology, an ontology-based systems re-engineering and modernisation approach. At the core of the methodology is the BORO Foundation. The tutorial will firstly introduce the foundation and then the methodology. It will start with a series of worked examples that explain the philosophical principles underlying the foundation. These will then be developed in further business based worked examples to illustrate how the methodology works and how the philosophical principles drive the methodology and analysis. The examples will showcase how the use of BORO promotes flexibility and reuse of the re-engineered models.

This paper describes the precisification of the notion of customer developed within the Core Enterprise Ontology (CEO) Project. The paper first benchmarks the current state of the art. It reviews the three main ways in which current applications attempt to specify the type of customer – highlighting their attractions and inadequacies and ranking them in terms of precision. It then outlines a more precise interpretation of customer, indicating why and where this improvement is needed. The interpretation is based upon the mereology of organisations developed within the CEO Project and an analysis by Margaret Gilbert of the nature of agreements.

This paper is a report on progress of the CEO project whose goal is to build a state of the art enterprise ontology. The project is currently at the stage of harvesting insights from the best existing enterprise ontologies. The goal of this stage is to synthesise from these a Base Enterprise Ontology. This will then be used as the foundation for the construction of the ‘industrial strength’ Core Enterprise Ontology (CEO). The synthesis is intended to build upon the strengths and eliminating — as far as possible — the weaknesses from the selected ontologies. Among other things, this paper describes one of the main achievements of this work to date: the development of the notion of a person (entities that can acquire rights and obligations) enabling the integration of a number of lower level concepts. In addition, it identifies some of the common ‘mistakes’ in current enterprise ontologies — and proposes solutions.

An overview of 42 Objects' approach to Business Ontology Based Software Development that aims to secure a measure of agreement on:

• What philosophical ontology is,
• Whether, and how, ontology can assist in object oriented software development,
• What philosophical ontology can add to the debate on the mapping between objects in the real world and system objects,
• What the key obstacles to the deployment of ontology are

Legacy Information Systems (LIS) pose a challenge for many organizations. On one hand, LIS are viewed as aging systems needing replacement; on the other hand, years of accumulated business knowledge have made these systems mission-critical. Current approaches however are often criticized for being overtly dependent on technology and ignoring the business knowledge which resides within LIS. In this light, this paper proposes a means of capturing the business knowledge in a technology agnostic manner and transforming it in a way that reaps the benefits of clear semantic expression – this transformation is achieved via the careful use of ontology. The approach called Content Sophistication (CS) aims to provide a model of the business that more closely adheres to the semantics and relationships of objects existing in the real world. The approach is illustrated via an example taken from a case study concerning the renovation of a large financial system and the outcome of the approach results in technology agnostic models that show improvements along several dimensions.

The aim of this book is to show you how to use business objects to re-engineer your existing information systems into models—and so systems—that are not only functionally richer but also structurally much simpler. It is a practical guide to re-engineering your systems; when you finish reading it, you will be ready to start. (Business objects can also help you to re-engineer the underlying business that is processed by these systems).

This paper examines the development of a conceptual model that defines Shell’s information requirements - the Downstream Data Model (DDM). The model has its roots in a framework based on the notion of ontological commitment and the focus of the analysis seeks to provide useful insights into the metaphysical aspects relevant to the creation and deployment of the DDM – primarily that related to the extensional nature of the model. The impact of this choice and the methodology employed in the production of the model is examined through example patterns covering spatial and temporal dissectiveness and the use of powerclasses. Having been through the experience of conceptual model development, the work concludes that the separation of the implementational and epistemological ‘gloss’ from a studied understanding of ontological commitment is a necessary evolution of practice in conceptual modelling.

I look at a couple of inter-related points:

1. That ontology is the foundation for a revolution (a paradigm shift) in the way we develop business application systems.
2. That (fortuitously) this new ontological way of building systems is well adapted to the (brownfield) legacy systems environment most development projects face today.

I find a good way of explaining these points is using the Kuhnian notion of a paradigm shift – and focusing on the data-process distinction within current mainstream paradigm for systems development. I consider some of the simplifying assumptions that were made when the current paradigm was developed in the late 70s – and the way their uncritical acceptance has warped the perception of the development process. I then describe how an ontological approach helps to develop more accurate and finer-grained picture of what is actually going on.
The new picture (paradigm) reveals that current development approaches are not, as commonly assumed, based upon a pure understanding of the business domain (or what is known about the domain) but wrapped up in computational design decisions. This insight helps us to see how we need to fundamentally change the way we understand the relation between an application system and its business domain. A key element of this is being able to effectively explain epistemic divergence – the difference between the domain/ontology and applications' epistemology - and this suggests a new framework for systems development.
Finally I indicate how this new framework is well adapted to the brownfield developments of today unlike the approaches that emerged from the greenfield developments common in the last century.

This tutorial should, hopefully, help you to explain what an ontology is and how it can be useful; identify several common misunderstandings when using attempting to ‘do’ ontology; see why a top ontology is useful; and appreciate its technical nature; and become acquainted with one example top ontology – BORO. It is intended to help you understand ontology, it is not intended to turn you into an ontologist.

The organizational environment increasingly demands that computer-based information systems are responsive to change and can work with each other seamlessly (ideally from a dynamic perspective). Given the large investment that organizations have in mission-critical legacy systems, evolutionary maintenance and systems integration now form a very significant part of the cost and effort profile of systems development. In terms of the integration issue, much of the difficulty lies in the fact that different systems often contain different ‘representations’ of the world. In the development process, it is generally accepted that the ‘information’ an information system contains about its business domain(s) is an essential intellectual part of the system, and the domain of fundamental concern. This concern is generally regarded as unitary, however, requiring no further breakdown into parts and it is commonly perceived that its relation to the business information system is simple and direct.

The goal of this report is to provide an in-depth common conceptual understanding of services end-to-end across the enterprise – one that encompasses business, IT and technical services and gives a picture of what, in essence, a service is.