Addresses two topics.
Firstly, the issue in current systems engineering practice: is the nested hierarchy of system of systems complex enough?
Secondly, it looks at two systems engineering (IT) issues ontology can help to solve:

• Semantic interoperability
• Semantic legacy modernisation – inheriting complexity

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 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.

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 walks through a project where the BORO methodology was used to re-engineer data in a defence architectural framework standard - MODAF. This standard has a UML metamodel. UML has (to an extent) a formal semantics, but was not designed to provide a real world semantics. Hence, MODAF at the start had no top level real world semantics, though it had started to establish middle level real world semantics, within UML’s top level formal semantics. This presentation explaines how MODEM used IDEAS (BORO) to bring the real world semantics in. This includes a detailed study of the improvements needed to the UML model for behaviour.
This is part of a series of tutorials that walk through examples that illustrate how the BORO methodology has been used to re-engineer data in an industrial context.

This tutorial walks through an illustrative case study of how the BORO methodology has been used to radical refactor data in an industrial context. The example is taken from work done reviewing the current practices and artefacts used for the information modelling of the Geospatial and Temporal References (G&TR) in the UK surface ship community and investigating the ways in which the use of ontologies can help to improve them. The themes of this tutorial are refactoring and rational reconstruction.
This is part of a series of tutorials that walk through examples that illustrate how the BORO methodology has been used to re-engineer data in an industrial context.

This tutorial provides an illustrative case study of how the BORO methodology has been used to re-engineer a paradigm shift in the foundations of accounting. It provides a nice example of how a shift in technology creates an opportunity for a new conceptual structure.
This is part of a series of tutorials that walk through examples that illustrate how the BORO methodology has been used to re-engineer data in an industrial context.

This tutorial provides an illustrative case study of how the BORO methodology has been used to improve precision. The case study looks at work done on the ontology of 'Air Control Means' a construct used in military air traffic control as part of a wider air defence ontology. It has these ontological themes; semantic vagueness, rational reconstruction, increased precision, shift from a pen and paper paradigm, fruitfulness.
This is part of a series of tutorials that walk through examples that illustrate how the BORO methodology has been used to re-engineer data in an industrial context.

In common with many other government defence departments, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has realised that it has a plethora of legacy systems that were procured as domain specific with little emphasis given to integration requirements. In particular, it realised that the lack of integration between a significant number of the legacy air defence command and control (AD-C2) systems meant it could not deliver the increased agility needed for joint force AD and that current approaches to integration were unlikely to resolve the problem. They realised that they needed a new approach that demonstrably worked. This paper describes a programme initiated by the MoD to address this problem through the formulation of a novel solution and its demonstration in the tactical AD-C2 environment using a sample of these existing legacy systems. It describes the ontological solution deployed to resolve the 'hard' semantic interoperability challenge. It outlines the physical and semantic architecture that was developed to support this approach and describes the implemented planning and collaborative execution (PACE-based) and semantic interoperability engine (SIE) solution.

From the perspective of enterprise computing, ontology is seen as a kind detached pure science. When enterprise computing ventures into ontological topics it does not look to ontology to provide it with theories - it devises its own theory-lite solutions. This keynote aims to make a case for joining up these two by identifying an area where enterprise computing can usefully apply ontological theory. It does this using an example; immutability, a current concern in big data. It argues that ontology’s theories about change, in particular McTaggart’s analysis of ways of viewing time in terms of series, provide a strong explanatory framework for enterprise computing’s immutability and have the potential to lead to better solutions. This approach also reveals that there is an aspect of change in computing systems – the epistemic aspect – where a mutable approach (McTaggart’s Series A) provides a better explanatory framework.

With re-engineering of software systems becoming quite pronounced amongst organisations, a software stability approach is required to balance the seemingly contradictory goals of stability over the software lifecycle with the need for adaptability, extensibility and interoperability. This paper addresses the issue of how software stability can be achieved over time by outlining an approach to evolving General Business Patterns (GBPs) from the empirical data contained within legacy systems. GBPs are patterns of business objects that are (directionally) stable across contexts of use. The approach is rooted in developing patterns by extracting the business knowledge embedded in existing software systems. The process of developing this business knowledge is done via the careful use of ontology, which provides a way to reap the benefits of clear semantic expression. A worked example is presented to show how stability is achieved via a process of ‘interpretation’ and ‘sophistication’. The outcome of the process demonstrates how the balance that stability seeks can be achieved.

This is the second part of an introduction to a series of tutorials that aim to provide a practical introduction for researchers and practitioners to potential for the use of foundational ontologies in industrial applications, based upon an actual application. These tutorials will be based upon industrial work currently being done using the BORO foundational methodology; an ontology-based systems (and data) re-engineering and modernisation approach. The first tutorial tutorial introduced ontology, particularly foundational ontologies. This second part introduces the BORO ontology.

The subsequent tutorials will use this introductory tutorial as a basis, they will walk through a number of illustrative examples of how the BORO methodology has been used to re-engineer data in an industrial context.

The digitalisation journey that takes us to semantically seamlessly interoperating enterprise systems is (at the later stages - where ontology is deployed) a hard road to travel. This presentation aims to highlight some of the main hurdles people will face on the digitalisation journey using a cultural evolution perspective. From this viewpoint, we highlight the radical new practices that need to be adopted along the journey. The presentation looks at the concerns this evolutionary perspective raises. For example, evolutionary contingency. It seems clear that if we don’t adapt in the right way, we will not evolve interoperability. While we have some idea of what the practices are, what the trajectory of the journey is. This is not enough, the community also needs find the means to (horizontally) inherit these. The presentation then does a quick tour around so of the new practices that need to be adopted.