The document discusses the MOST project, which aims to integrate ontologies into model-driven software development. It notes that the MOST project seeks to develop a seamless integration of ontologies and modeling languages to guide ontology-driven software development. Comarch is coordinating the MOST project and providing a case study on applying the research to its large-scale OSS development, with the goal of increasing productivity, reducing time to market, and improving software quality.

1. Copyright Comarch 2010
Marrying Ontologies and Software
Technologies
Comarch and the MOST project

2. Comarch and the MOST project
2 Copyright Comarch 2010
“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of
analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions
between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this
possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does,
the day-to-day mechanisms of trade,
bureaucracy and our daily lives will be
handled by machines talking to machines.
The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted
for ages will finally materialize.”
[Tim Berners-Lee,
the inventor of the World Wide Web]

3. Comarch and the MOST project
3 Copyright Comarch 2010
Web 3.0 or semantic web – definitions – part 1
• Semantic Web - next generation web where machines can read
web pages and extract useful information using cognitive
decision-making ability, emulating human beings
– HTML is still incapable of defining relationships among data -
it provides merely for the presentation of information
– In order for web documents to be processed by a machine, a
layer of semantic information needs to be added over the
existing web content
• Web Ontology Language (OWL) - a language to classify web
content using a standard hierarchical categorization scheme

4. Comarch and the MOST project
4 Copyright Comarch 2010
Web 3.0 or semantic web – definitions – part 2
• Resource Description Framework (RDF) - a data modeling
framework that can be considered as a knowledge
representation format
– SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) -
an RDF query language that facilitates extracting information
from the web where content is represented using RDF;
together, these technologies provide the means to annotate
web content with meta-data and then help extract the
required information by identifying the nature of the content.

5. Comarch and the MOST project
5 Copyright Comarch 2010
Model-driven software development
• MDSD - Model-driven software development (or Model-Driven
Architecture – MDA) - an emerging technology that promises to
introduce significant efficiencies and rigor to software development
• Increased complexity of products + shorter development cycles +
higher expectations of quality = challenges at all stages of the
software lifecycle
• Response - software-engineering methodologies (mostly
promoting usage of models) used to capture information
concerning requirements, architecture, design, implementation
and testing
– Example: conceptualization of business entities that exist in the
system domain in class diagrams available in Unified Modeling
Language (UML)

6. Comarch and the MOST project
6 Copyright Comarch 2010
MDSD – a promising approach
• MDSD provides means for separating the business
and implementation aspects of software at different
abstraction levels – key for efficient development of complex software
systems for a heterogeneous customer community
– models are artifacts that lead to the running system - MDSD promotes
frequent usage of automatic transformations that may generate platform-
specific models and code from platform or computation-independent
models: models are no longer just blueprints
• In the context of Operation Support Systems (OSS), MDSD is in line with the
efforts of such bodies as the TMForum
– Both TMF/NGOSS and OMG/MDA are aimed at providing benefits to the
business leaders and development communities through technology-
neutral architecture (sustainable through technology changes)

7. Comarch and the MOST project
7 Copyright Comarch 2010
Model-driven software development
• MDSD still involves some
challenges:
– The specifications are fragmented
on different abstraction levels
– The MDSD processes can be
difficult to configure and customize
– Loss of oversight and
understanding
• Key questions to be answered:
– Validity of models
– Relationship between models and
code

8. Comarch and the MOST project
8 Copyright Comarch 2010
• MOST - Marrying Ontology and Software
Technology is an European Commission
Information and Communication
Technologies research project in Seventh
Research Framework Programme. MOST
started in February 2008 and has duration of
3 years; learn more on
http://www.most-project.eu/
MOST project
– Marrying Ontologies and Software Technologies

9. Comarch and the MOST project
9 Copyright Comarch 2010
MOST project
– Marrying Ontologies and Software Technologies
The main objective of the MOST project is to develop a
seamless integration technology for ontologies into MDSD,
resulting in ontology-driven software development (ODSD).
This integration technology concerns all artifacts involved
(ontology and modeling languages, models, tools), as well as
development processes in order to guide the developers in their
activities.

10. Comarch and the MOST project
10 Copyright Comarch 2010
Comarch involvement in the MOST project
• Comarch, the coordinator of the MOST
project, is to provide a case study for
MOST technology. This involves:
– evaluating the research results
– providing industrial use cases that
reflect real-life challenges of large
scale software development

11. Comarch and the MOST project
11 Copyright Comarch 2010
Comarch involvement in the MOST project
The case study is to cover the area of a large OSS
development
- Comarch has already formulated well-established development
methodology for systems in the Comarch OSS Suite product line,
including the usage of model-driven methods.
The intent of the case study is to
use these existing sources as a
starting point and to adopt MOST
technological advancement to
increase productivity, time to
market, and software quality.