Semantic Models for Information Systems

个人和组织现在都可以访问比以往更多的数据，从数据库到网络和数字媒体的各种来源。不幸的是，数据和信息不是一回事。为了有意义地利用这些数据，用户必须对其进行筛选、分类和结构化，并保持数据的最新状态。这样的信息管理任务对于管理者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不断增长，这种形式的管理将变得越来越苛刻和越来越关键。本研究的基本假设是，信息建模和知识工程的进步使得开发集成技术和方法成为可能，这些技术和方法可以极大地促进数据的管理并将其转化为有用的信息。我们未来五年的研究将集中在两个主题上，一个与软件工程有关，另一个与信息建模和知识管理有关。关于第一个主题，我们建议继续研究面向代理的软件（Tropos项目）的软件开发方法。我们的方法采用诸如“代理”、“目标”和（代理间）“依赖”等概念来指定面向代理的软件的需求和设计。这项工作将产生一种系统的方法，用于构建软件，该软件可以在动态、开放的操作环境中进行沟通、协商、计划和适应，以满足利益相关者的需求。关于第二个主题，我们建议开展扩展现有数据库设计方法的研究。我们还建议研究概念模型和建模的新理论，结合逻辑和范畴理论的方法来解决模型的句法和语义问题。

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.