An ontology for ISO software engineering standards: 1) Creating the infrastructure

• We propose an ontological framework to unify ISO software engineering standards.
• A comprehensive foundational ontology is proposed: definitional elements ontology.
• We discuss how DEO is tailored to a project-specific foundational ontology (a CDO).
• Many standards are examples of standard domain ontology (SDO) conformant to the CDO.
• We explain how this ontological architecture is created and maintained within SC7.

Software engineering standards developed under the auspices of ISO/IEC JTC1's SC7 have been identified as employing terms whose definitions vary significantly between standards. This led to a request in 2012 to investigate the creation of an ontological infrastructure that aims to be a single coherent underpinning for all SC7 standards, present and future. Here, we develop that necessary infrastructure prior to its adoption by SC7 and its implementation (likely 2014). The proposal described here requires, firstly, the identification of a single comprehensive set of definitions, the definitional elements ontology (DEO). For the scope of an individual standard, only a subset of these definitional elements will be needed. Once configured, this definitional subset creates a configured definitional ontology or CDO. Both the DEO and the CDO are essentially foundational ontologies from which a domain-specific ontology known as a SDO or standard domain ontology can be created. Consequently, all such SDOs are conformant to a CDO and hence to the single DEO thus ensuring that all standards use the same ontological base. Standards developed in this fashion will therefore be not only of a higher quality but also, importantly, interoperable.