A methodology for accurate and redundancy-free business requirements description using ontology

Abstract

Data deluge and changing business environment are considered to be serious in that data in corporate information systems are too conveniently and frequently replicated for companies to make decisions properly. Inaccurate and redundant data would induce erroneous decision making which bases on error-infectious information systems. We report that most of inaccuracy and redundancy can be effectively removed from the very start of information system development using business description. Over the last few decades, a few efforts to make business descriptions correctly have been directed toward ontology for business requirements elicitation. However, due to excessive reliance on stale knowledge of past documents, most ontology based systems have failed to formulate appropriate business requirements for up-to-date business circumstances. We propose a new enhanced method which can formulate a flexible business description on the basis of local domain ontology as well as prior knowledge bases. In addition to utilizing ontology as business requirements description, our method focuses on accuracy and redundancy in business requirements description. To evaluate the methodology, we devised a new system of ontology integration for business requirements description.