Sparx Systems Forum
Enterprise Architect => Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools => Topic started by: don work on January 13, 2010, 12:41:57 pm
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Hi,
I noticed on some web sites that EA was planned to have support for OWL using VOM (Visual Owl Model, or some such) and a UML profile from OMG by the end of 2009.
Is is available yet? If so, where-so?
On the way?
Abandonned?
Don
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I certainly would appreciate an OMG OWL profile soon.
And please remember to make the profile OWL 2 compatible. It would even be acceptable to restrict the implementation to the OWL 2 QL profile if this speeds up the process.
/Peter
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The OWL / RDF profiles would be of high importance to my work too.
I tried to import the OMG profiles - http://www.omg.org/spec/ODM/1.0/ .
This did not work without modifications.
When I did the modifications I could load the stereotypes but they were no longer part of profiles.
Therefore I created a dummy profile and moved the stereotypes to it.
The result was not encouraging.
Next step I purchased MagicDraw which could not load the original OMG files either. But the MagicDraw support team could send the original projects. The result: The contents of the import in EA is correct, with the awaited difference that it is not correctly assigned to existing stereotypes like "class".
Will Sparx work on that issue or will someone have to do the giant work to create the profile by comparison with what can be seen in MagicDraw?
Herbert
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Is there a specificationof the Enterprise Architect UML Profile XML format?
I might be able to find some time to do a little work on this.
I tried reverse engineering the four EA UML Provile .xml files available on the web. Reasonable success, but strange results in EA (see next posting). But I'd rather work to a spec if I am going to put anyeffort into it. Would hate to have to throw it out later.
Don
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A bit of background-
I have migrated my career from solutions architect to enterprise architect, but am constantly dissappointed by teh lack of precision in the ea world. Work is currently squabbling over which tool to use to develop a model repository.
After training in TOGAF and FEAF, and experience with the MAgic Quadrant #1 tool, and arguments about reference models vs. architectures etc., I have come to one simple conclusion:-
use Information Archtiecture standard terminology. EA terminology is immature. The obvious candidates are Taxonomies and Ontologies,
with RDF and OWL being way out in front. I am confident that with them I can model just about anything with precision.
The trouble is my eyes and brain fail trying to read XML endlessly.
I want visual version. The obvious solution - UML Profiles for RDF and OWL.
It looks like I am right on the bleeding edge with this. If anyone can point me at an OWL/UML working solution, please let me know.
(And I still have to convince the rest of work to go this way. Bah.)
Don
PS. The Gartner MAgic Quadrant #1 tool sucks bigtime.
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so far we just have used UML Tools to model software and OWL / RDF Tools (like Protégé, Swoop, TopBraid Composer, ...) to model data structure and knowledge.
The reason for using an UML Tool to model OWL is the hope to get a platform which allows for different representations of our models:
UML --> serialization to OWL / RDF
UML --> serialization to .XSD /.XML
UML --> TM
we also had a look on the Eclipse plugins for that purpose:
http://www.eclipse.org/m2m/atl/usecases/ODMImplementation/
and
http://www.topquadrant.com/products/TB_Composer.html together with the UML2 plugin http://www.eclipse.org/modeling/mdt/?project=uml2
but I also experienced a lot of things which do not work as awaited in that world.
The conclusion: I am not so sure whether our intention is just theoretically nice or not.
Herbert
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I tried to import the OMG profiles - http://www.omg.org/spec/ODM/1.0/ .
This did not work without modifications.
What were the modifications you made? I have never been able to import the xmi (neither of the two available). Instead I have startet developing my own OWL 2 profile plus transformation to OWL/XML. Quite a lot of work so it certainly would be nice if Sparx would help out here.
/Peter
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I introduced a model and one packaged element before the line starting with <profile.... :
<uml:Model xmi:type="uml:Model" name="EA_Model" visibility="public">
<packagedElement xmi:type="uml:Package" xmi:id="EAPK_3466B606_3DF9_4440_B7E2_55E44FABA47E" name="OWLasUML" visibility="public">
so you also need this at the end:
.......
</packagedElement>
</uml:Model>
</xmi:XMI>
then I changed the profiles (OWL and RDF) to packaged Elements:
<packagedElement xmi:type="uml:Package" xmi:id="EAPK_5B1C5D75_36D2_43e8_97E8_2A1CE5194F0C" name="OWL" visibility="public">
(all the EA - GUIDS were taken from an empty EA-dummy project)
I also changed the MagicDraw header to an EA header, but I think this was not really necessary.
@peter: can you send me the profile ?
Herbert
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Additionally:
It was not difficult to copy the imported elements to a created profile. But then the connections to existing stereotypes were missing, as they can be seen when loading the profile into MagicDraw.(the correct profile, - which I got from the MagicDraw support center)
I think that a lot of other information was lost too.
Herbert
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@peter: can you send me the profile ?
If I manage to create something worth looking at/working with before Sparx delivers a solution; sure, I can give you a copy. But it may take a while. I have to finish another project first.
/Peter
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Haven't this tread been placed in the wrong forum? Wouldn't we have a better chance of getting the attention of Sparx if this tread was placed in "Suggestions and requests"?
/Peter
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fine - can we move it there?
I wouldn't even mind to reenter the text - if you start a thread at "suggestions and requests" - simply tell me
herbert
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Haven't this tread been placed in the wrong forum? Wouldn't we have a better chance of getting the attention of Sparx if this tread was placed in "Suggestions and requests"?
/Peter
It actually doesn't matter where you put it on the forum... It gets the same attention from Sparx.
What DOES get Sparx's attention is submitting formal Feature Requests (by a large number of users) using the formal process in the links below...
HTH,
Paolo
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So we have got two tasks:
(1) select a common name for that feature - proposed name: OMD-profile
(2) find as many people as possible to support that feature request
Herbert
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(1) select a common name for that feature - proposed name: OMD-profile
If you meant 'ODM-profile' then yes this could be ONE of the profiles we would need. But since this is a metamodel intended to provide a common foundation for ontology modeling and mapping between modeltools we will need to be more specific. The ODM specification includes models for use of RDF, RDFS, OWL, Topic Maps and Common Logic.
On the top of my wish list are models using OWL 2. I would therefor propose that Sparx develop (in that order) :
As I wrote previously I would even be happy to see the subset of OWL 2, specificly the OWL QL profile - if that would speed up the process.
Feel free to add to the list :)
/Peter
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If added a request to the "suggestions and enhancements" forum - at
http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1263767742/0#0
It links back to this discussion also.
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I have submitted a feature request - called OWL Profile.
I don't knwo how you would support this, apart from submitting your own requests with the same name.
Don
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I will do so!
So far we have seen that it should be quite simple to generate a .OWL file from the access database of EA.
Did any one do this task already?
herbert
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I have also submitted another feature request.
Generating OWL may not seem difficult but import - export built into the tooling (as in XSD) will be.
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Perhaps we should explore Salayande's comments further.
My first concern has been getting the modelling capability, by being able to import a UML Profile into EA.
But waht do we want to do once we have that done and have created a model.
Presumably we will want to export the standard OWL xml format.
And also to be able to import that format.
Exporting XSD is a capability of the product, but it relies on a different UML profile with different stereotypes. We would need a translation between the two.
I am guessing that the reverse would also be desirable - to import XSD into a model, and have it modified into an owl model.
For myself, I would normally do this via XSLT transformation of the XMI file. I have a bit of experience with this, and could probably provide some translations to the community.
To aid in this sort of work, I have been considering a new XML format (call it XUCD - Xml UML Class Diagram) aimed solely at modelling UML class diagrams in a more friendly manner than the highly abstract XMI format.
It might be a worthwhileexercise to do scripts to convert between XMI and XUCD. Then we can do stereotype conversions etc. in XUCD
If we had all this working in a klutzy way, then perhaps Sparx would be willing to integrate the scripts intot he product.
Here I am jumping to solutiosn again - <sigh>
What would people want to do with their OWL models once they can generate them?
Don
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There is some work going on at SourceForge on the relationships between differenf formats etc:- here
http://xml2owl.sourceforge.net/index.php
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Nice summary Don.
The answer to your last qustion is very simple for me:
We want to create basic concepts and reference lists and links between them all as one foundation for semantic interoperability of dislocated, heterogenous (environmental) data which have to be integrated.
We would be happy if there was 1 plattform for that whole task. But there is not just 1 platform. A lot of data exchange and data integration is still done on XML / XML-Schema level (all the OGC stuff for example).
Much semantic work is done on RDF / OWL and I suppose that one day also data exchange and data integration will be done on that plattform.
Much semantic work is done on UML-level (all the ISO stuff around ISO TC211).
That's the reason why we tremendously need tools for round trip engeneering between those 3 platforms.
Herbert
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Herbert and Don,
I share the same requirements as Herbert: Semantic Interoperability.
I use Protege to develop Ontologies and generate OWL. I would like to do all my work in a single modeling environment.
With some effort and help from Sparxsystems, it must be possible to implement an Add-In based on the OMG UML Profile labelled the Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM). Specification may be found at http://www.omg.org/spec/ODM/1.0