Ontology-Driven Enterprise Modeling: A Plugin for the Protégé Platform

Abstract

The use of ontologies for enterprise modeling has been discussed from different perspectives in the past. In the paper at hand we describe design options for creating enterprise models by using an ontology as a shared domain conceptualization connected through ontology-driven conceptual modeling. The enterprise models thus act as representations of ontology instances. As a major benefit, a coupling between the visual representations of enterprise models and the reasoning capabilities that are typically available for ontologies can be achieved. In addition, we describe options for the realization of such an approach, which ideally builds upon existing platforms for enabling re-use and interoperability. Finally, we present an open-source implementation as a Protégé plugin to show the technical feasibility and its application to a use case in the area of enterprise modeling.