OWL Ontology to ECORE Metamodel Transformation for Designing a Domain Specific Language to Develop Aviation Scenarios

Abstract

Ontology-driven software development has gained significant interest in domain-specific application development. Ontologies are treated as formal models representing the knowledge, which can be eventually used for automatic code generation. Among existing modeling technologies, the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) has been widely used to generate domain-specific metamodels using Ecore, and all the way to generation of the Java code. Such robust technologies suggest mapping ontologies to metamodels through series of transformations. A number of efforts have tried mapping ontologies to Ecore metamodels for fast code generation and knowledge consistency. In this paper we suggest transforming an OWL-based ontology model to EMF Ecore metamodel for designing a Domain Specific Language (DSL). We present the ontology developed for Aviation Scenario Definition Language (ASDL) to capture various simulation scenarios in the aviation domain. We demonstrate key terminologies and their use and definitions in order to generate flight simulation scenarios such as: landing, departure, reroute, etc. The use of Web Ontology Language (OWL) in developing ASDL ontology is discussed and its relation to ASDL Ecore metamodel is presented. This paper finally elaborates the challenges and shortfalls in mapping OWL ontology to Ecore metamodel in EMF.