A modelling method for consistent physical devices management: An ADOxx case study

Abstract

In the domain of network management and operation support systems (OSS), maintainance of thousands of physical network devices is a complex, error-prone and time-consuming task. Consistent device configuration and error identification among plethora of network device types is impossible without tool support. Domain-specific modelling (DSM) methods promise to deal with system complexity by raising the level of abstraction to models. In this paper, we report about conceptualization of a DSM method for physical devices management, that is implemented based on the ADOxx metamodelling platform. The method introduces a hybrid modelling approach. A dedicated DSML is used to model the structure of physical devices, whereas the ontology language OWL2 is used to specify configuration-related constraints. The work resulted in a novel semantic modelling tool prototype that leverage ontology reasoning technology to enhance the modelling. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.