Using ontologies for comparing modeling techniques: Experience report

Abstract

The paper presents a comparison of two modelling techniques that can be used to describe an organization as an interconnected set of business processes. The first technique is called Fractal Enterprise Model, which is an invention of the authors of this paper. The second technique is a well-established technique, IDEF0, normally used to present a functional decomposition of an enterprise. The comparison is done based on building a simplified ontology for each technique using UML class diagrams, after which a mapping is established between the concepts of the two ontologies. The discussion that follows analyzes how much of a model designed using one technique can be represented using the other, which is illustrated by an example.