Semantic Models for Information Systems

现在，个人和组织都可以从数据库、网络和数字媒体等各种来源获得比以往更多的数据。不幸的是，数据与信息不是一回事。为了使数据得到有意义的利用，用户必须对数据进行筛选、分类和结构化，并保持数据的最新性。这种信息管理任务对于管理人员和知识工作者来说一直都很重要。随着可用数据的数量和种类的持续增长，这种形式的管理将变得越来越苛刻和越来越重要。本研究的基本假设是，信息建模和知识工程的进步使开发集成技术成为可能，沿着的方法可以极大地促进数据管理并将其转化为有用的信息。我们在未来五年的研究将集中在两个主题，一个与软件工程有关，另一个信息建模和知识管理。关于第一个主题，我们建议继续工作的软件开发方法，面向代理的软件（Tropos项目）。我们的方法采用的概念，如“代理”，“目标”和（代理间）“依赖”，以指定面向代理的软件的需求和设计。这项工作将导致一个系统的方法，用于构建软件，可以沟通，谈判，计划和适应，以解决利益相关者的要求，在一个动态的，开放的操作环境。关于第二个主题，我们建议进行研究，扩展现有的数据库设计方法。我们还建议工作的概念模型和建模，联合收割机逻辑和范畴理论的方法来解决模型的语法和语义问题的新理论。

Individuals and organizations alike now have access to more data than ever, from a variety of sources ranging from databases to the web and digital media. Unfortunately, data is not the same thing as information. To make meaningful use of the data, users must sift through it, classify and structure it, also maintain it current. Such information management tasks have always been important for managers and knowledge workers. As the amount and variety of available data continues to grow, this form of management will become ever more demanding and ever more critical.The basic hypothesis of this research is that advances in information modeling and knowledge engineering have made it possible to develop integrated technologies along with methodologies which can greatly facilitatethe management of data and turn it into useful information.Our research over the next five years will focus on two topics, one related to software engineering, the other to information modeling and knowledge management. On the first topic, we propose to continue work on asoftware development methodology for agent-oriented software (the Tropos project). Our approach adopts concepts such as "agent", "goal" and (inter-agent) "dependency" to specify requirements and designs for agent-oriented software. This work will result in a systematic method for building software thast can communicate, negotiate, plan and adapt to address stakeholder requirements in a dynamic, open operating environment. On the second topic, we propose to conduct research that extends existing methodologies for designing databases. We also propose to work on novel theories of conceptual models and modelling that combine Logical and Category-theoretic approaches to address syntactic and semantic issues for models.