SEON: A software engineering ontology network

Abstract

Software Engineering (SE) is a wide domain, where ontologies are useful instruments for dealing with Knowledge Management (KM) related problems. When SE ontologies are built and used in isolation, some problems remain, in particular those related to knowledge integration. The goal of this paper is to provide an integrated solution for better dealing with KM-related problems in SE by means of a Software Engineering Ontology Network (SEON). SEON is designed with mechanisms for easing the development and integration of SE domain ontologies. The current version of SEON includes core ontologies for software and software processes, as well as domain ontologies for the main technical software engineering subdomains, namely requirements, design, coding and testing. We discuss the development of SEON and some of its envisioned applications related to KM.