An Ontology for ISO software engineering standards: 2) Proof of concept and application

• This paper reports on a project, initiated by ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7, aiming to provide a shared ontology for SC7 standards. An extensible proof-of-concept ontology is presented as a result, together with some example applications.
• This ontology can be extended through well-known mechanisms for each standard or family of standards, thus achieving a balance between standardization and customization.
• The paper also makes a set of recommendations for SC7 for further harmonization and interoperability between standards.
• This paper builds on top of Henderson-Sellers, B., Gonzalez-Perez, C., McBride, T. and Low, G., 2014, “An ontology for ISO software engineering standards: 1) Creating the infrastructure”, Computer Standards & Interfaces, 36.

Software engineering standards often utilize different underpinning metamodels and ontologies, which sometimes differ between standards. For better adoption by industry, harmonization of these standards by use of a domain ontology has been advocated. In this paper we apply this approach in a proof of concept project. We recommend the creation of a single underpinning abstract domain ontology, created from existing ISO/IEC standards including ISO/IEC 24744 and 24765 and supplemented by any other sources authorized by SC7 as being appropriate and useful. Such an adoption of a single ontology will permit the re-engineering of existing International Standards such as 12207, 15288 and 33061 as refinements from this domain ontology so that these variously focussed standards can all inter-operate.