Ontologies of engineering knowledge: General structure and the case of software engineering

Engineering knowledge is a specific kind of knowledge that is oriented to the production of particular classes of artifacts, is typically related to disciplined design methods, and takes place in tool-intensive contexts. As a consequence, representing engineering knowledge requires the elaboration of complex models that combine functional and structural representations of the resulting artifacts with process and methodological knowledge. The different categories used in the engineering domain vary in their status and in the way they should be manipulated when building applications that support engineering processes. These categories include artifacts, activities, methods and models. This paper surveys existing models of engineering knowledge and discusses an upper ontology that abstracts the categories that crosscut different engineering domains. Such an upper model can be reused for particular engineering disciplines. The process of creating such elaborations is reported on the particular case study of Software Engineering as a concrete application example.