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Introduction
I developed a technique called ontological
excavation to reverse-engineer the ontology from the morphology
[Hsi_03]
. Ontological excavation uses black-box techniques; the ontology is
reverse engineered from the user interface of the application rather than
the source code. Black box reverse engineering allows us to identify just
the concepts visible to the user rather than the concepts relevant to the
application’s implementation. The basic steps of ontological excavation
are:
- Model the user interface in a morphological
map of the application’s interactors, displays, and
containers.
- Generate a list of morphological elements.
- For each element, identify the concepts
(entity types and
attributes) that it invokes.
- Through dynamic interaction with the application, identify the relationships
between the concepts.
- Model the concepts and relationships into a semantic network
representing the application’s ontology.
Current Excavation Projects
Applications of Ontological Excavation and Analysis
- Reverse engineer core concepts for reengineering and program
comprehension
- Study feature evolution of a product line.
- Study feature variation of applications within a problem domain
- Measure conceptual integrity of an existing application
- Ontological analysis can be applied towards the development of a new
application using ontology derived from requirements gathering
efforts.
- Has produced comprehensive model of feature / computing
architecture of a computing application that will inform metrics for
assessing design quality in the context of the intended goals of the
system.
Research Topics
- Idris
Hsi, "Measuring the Conceptual Fitness of a Computing
Application in a Computing Ecosystem", Proceedings of the
ACM Workshop on Interdisciplinary Software Engineering Research
(WISER'04) at the 12 Annual Foundations of Software Engineering
(FSE-12), November 5, 2004, pp. 27-36. (33% Acceptance Rate). pdf format
- Idris Hsi, "Analyzing the Conceptual Coherence of Computing
Applications Through Ontological Excavation", PhD Thesis
Proposal, May 13, 2004. pdf
format
- Idris Hsi, Colin Potts, and Melody Moore, "Ontological
Excavation: Unearthing the core concepts of the application",
Proceedings of Tenth Working Conference on Reverse Engineering 2003
(WCRE'03), November 13-16, 2003, pp. 345-352. (42% Acceptance Rate). pdf
format.
- Idris Hsi and Colin Potts, "Studying the Evolution and Enhancement of Software
Features", Proceedings of the 2000 International Conference of Software
Maintenance, San Jose, CA, October 11-14, 2000, IEEE Press, pp.
143-151. in pdf format.
- Colin Potts and Idris Hsi, "Abstraction and Context
in Requirements Engineering: Toward a Synthesis", Annals of Software Engineering,
9: 1-39, 1997. in pdf format
Previous Excavations
- Windows 95/98 CD Player
- Palm Pilot Scheduler
- Microsoft Notepad
- Protocol's Executive Calculator / Calendar
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