=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1660/womocoe-paper5
|storemode=property
|title=Using an Ontology Pattern Stack to Engineer a Core Ontology of Accounting Information Systems
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1660/womocoe-paper5.pdf
|volume=Vol-1660
|authors=Ivars Blums,Hans Weigand
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/fois/BlumsW16
}}
==Using an Ontology Pattern Stack to Engineer a Core Ontology of Accounting Information Systems==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1660/womocoe-paper5.pdf
Using an Ontology Pattern Stack to
engineer a Core Ontology of Accounting
Information Systems
Ivars BLUMSa,1 and Hans WEIGAND b
a
SIA ODO Latvia
b
University of Tilburg, The Netherlands
Abstract. Although the field of Accounting Information Systems (AIS) has a long
tradition, there is still a lack of a widely adopted conceptualization. In this paper,
The UFO ontology patterns are regarded for application by analogy and extension
in the engineering of a core ontology for AIS. The new IASB Conceptual
Framework for Financial Reporting is used as a main source of the domain
knowledge, and a core ontology for AIS is proposed that includes (offered, agreed,
partial, settlement and realization) economic exchange patterns of an enterprise. The
economic exchanges affect enterprise economic resources and claims that are
represented by economic relator patterns including offerings, agreements,
(unconditional, in process and residual) obligations and property rights. The model
is an important step towards the development of a Core ontology and Ontology
Pattern Language for AIS.
Keywords. AIS, UFO, Ontology Patterns, Economic Exchange, Resources
1. Introduction
Although the field of the enterprise Accounting Information Systems (AIS) has a long
tradition, scholars in [11] conclude the absence of a widely adopted conceptualization.
The (Financial) Accounting for an enterprise and thus AIS domain may be
characterized as a hierarchy of models: 1. Conceptual Framework for Financial
Reporting, 2. International and National Accounting Standards and Interpretations, 3.
Enterprise Policies. At present these models are undergoing a substantial change with
the introduction of a new Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting - CF [4] and a
number of new International Financial Reporting Standards – IFRS [5, 6, 29], by the
International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Some of the problems that still
remain are the vagueness, inconsistency and ambiguity of the verbal form of the CF and
standards [32], as well as the limited coverage of the economic exchange lifecycle. To
overcome these issues ontology technologies are researched for building Accounting and
AIS domain reference ontologies e.g. in [3, 32]; and by the authors [31] using the SABiO
[21] methodology.
SABiO recognizes the importance of the reuse of ontological resources: existing
domain ontologies, core ontologies, foundational ontologies, and ontology patterns
(OPs) in the development of domain ontologies and advocates for the use of an
ontologically well-founded language during ontology capture. According to [23],
Foundational ontologies span across many fields and model the very basic and general
1
Corresponding Author. E-mail: Ivars.Blums@odo.lv
concepts and relations that make up the world, they contain the Foundational Ontology
Patterns(FOPs). Domain ontologies, in turn, describe the conceptualization related to a
specific domain and contain Domain Related Ontology Patterns(DROPs). Core
ontologies are located between foundational and domain ontologies and provide a
definition of structural knowledge in a specific field that spans across different
application domains in this field.
In this paper, the engineering of a core ontology for AIS called EXP [31] is
considered as grounded on Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) [15] and using the
core ontology of Services UFO-S [7], by applying the FOPs of UFO by analogy and
DROPs of UFO-S by extension. The domain is elicited from the works of accounting
theorists e.g. [1, 9]; the CF and common concepts for the most of IFRS standards;
working as and with the AIS and Audit experts. The DROPs of the EXP ontology are
supposed to be used as core patterns for engineering of the IFRS Standards and Policy
based sub-ontologies for AIS.
The main contribution of the paper is the proposed FOP and DROP Pattern stack
for the EXP and the extension of UFO-S concepts and patterns for commitment based
economic exchanges and economic resources. The expected benefits are better
understanding and more precise concepts for AIS, pattern reuse for modeling IFRS
Standards and Policies and aligning with other Enterprise related Ontologies, e.g. [17,
30], and substantial code reuse for AIS Software.
The evaluation of EXP is in progress by testing and verifying the model with the
UFO language tools, engineering the sub-ontologies for the IFRSs and a large number of
cases included with them, as well as analyzing several ERP systems [from Infor, 1C,
Oracle] and practical cases, and conduct reviews with domain specialists.
We subscribe to Ijiri’s view [1] that the activities of an enterprise comprise planning
and fulfillment of a coordinated chain of economic exchanges. These exchanges affect
economic resources and claims against the enterprise (negative economic resources). In
an economic event of exchange, an economic agent expenses its resources, to earn an
income of resources of a greater benefit for the agent. The concepts and patterns of the
economic exchanges, participating agents and economic resources are the entities of an
AIS and our research.
Section 2 describes the background of the research, section 3 introduces the overall
exchange model, section 4 compares with related work while section 5 concludes with a
discussion and future directions.
2. Background
2.1. Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO)
In search of the ontological foundations for conceptual modeling - theories,
methodologies and engineering tools (including modeling languages, patterns, anti-
patterns as well as computational tools) and a functional complex of FOPs and consistent
guidelines of their application for our model, we have looked for one that includes event
and social concepts as well as provides tools for a modular ontology engineering support.
Next in our criteria were the enterprise DROPs and their usage in ontological analysis
and improving existing enterprise related standards and ontologies, as well as
engineering new ontologies. These additional criteria played a crucial role for the choice
in favor of the UFO [8,15] with the ontologically well-founded conceptual modeling
profile of UML termed OntoUML [20] — the language as well as its associated
methodological and computational tools of pattern-based model construction, code
generation, formal verification and formal validation, model verbalization and anti-
pattern detection. In addition, it provides Ontological Pattern Languages (OPLs) that are
based on a set of interrelated patterns, plus a process model (a procedure, a script) guiding
on how to use and combine them in a specific order, and suggesting patterns for solving
some modeling problems. The UFO is divided into three strata dealing with different
aspects of reality, namely:
UFO-A covers structural aspects and patterns - Objects, their types, their
parts/wholes, the roles they play, their intrinsic/relational particularized properties
(modes) and their types. A distinguishing concept in UFO-A is a Relator [27], which can
be seen as reified relationship of aggregations of particularized properties inhering in
related entities, accounting for the way the related entities are involved in the relationship.
The FOPs that were selected for our modeling are the Role with disjoint allowed types
pattern, needed for Economic agent roles and the Relator-material relation pattern
employed for Economic resources.
UFO-B covers dynamic aspects - Events and their parts, Relations between events,
Object participation in events, Temporal properties of entities, Causation, Change and
the connection between Events and Objects via Dispositions. For our modeling, the
Individual Participation FOP of UFO-B was of interest, for Economic exchange and its
sub-events.
UFO-C: An Ontology of Intentional and Social Entities, which is constructed on top
of UFO-A and UFO-B, and which addresses notions such as Beliefs, Desires, Intentions,
Goals, Actions, Commitments and Claims, Social Roles and Social Particularized
Relational Complexes (Social Relators), among others. The main FOP that will be used
in engineering our ontology is the Social Relator Pattern, see Fig.1.
Figure 1. An OntoUML diagram of Social relator pattern, adapted from the [10], foundation event added.
Social relators are relators composed of one or more pairs of social commitments
and social claims [16]. As with all relators, social relators are founded in particular events.
A social commitment is a commitment of an agent A towards another agent B. As an
externally dependent mode, a social commitment inheres in A and is externally
dependent on B. As a consequence, a social claim of B towards A is created.
DROPs relating to enterprise structure and measurement, that are required for our
purposes are organized for reuse by E-OPL and M-OPL [28].
UFO-S [7] is a core ontology on services, which is grounded on the Unified
Foundational Ontology. UFO-S characterizes the service phenomena by considering
service commitments and claims established between service participants (provider and
customer) along the service life-cycle. UFO-S is modularized into three sub-ontologies
that account for the basic phases of the service life-cycle: service offer, service
negotiation/agreement and service delivery. As a core ontology, UFO-S presents general
concepts that span across several applications domains in such a way that its
conceptualization can be broadly reused, and as shown further, also for our ontology.
UFO-S facilitates the pattern reuse with S-OPL [24]. As an illustration of phenomena
conceptualized, we further use a case from [7]: “A restaurant [the enterprise] establishes
the meta-commitment of accepting the commitment of serving Caesar Salad in less than
10 minutes after order (a service offer). When a customer sits down, checks the menu
and orders a Caesar Salad via the waiter (an event which can be understood as a simplistic
service negotiation leading to a service agreement), the restaurant becomes committed
towards that customer to serve a Caesar Salad in less than 10 minutes. In that moment,
we can say that the meta-commitment was fulfilled.” The actual preparing and serving
the Caesar Salad and consumption and payment actions by customer comprise the service
delivery phase.
In order to cover domain constraints that cannot be represented using the language’s
diagrammatic notation, the editor supports specification of OCL and temporal OCL
formal constraints, the ones from UFO-S patterns are used in EXP.
2.2. Economic exchange and the main concepts of the IASB Conceptual Framework
The current state of the Financial accounting conceptualization is represented by the new
CF [4] and the IFRS. Neither formal conceptualization nor AIS exists at the moment that
conforms to the issued standards and the CF, that is set to be finalized in 2016. An AIS
maintains, processes and reports information about the enterprise economic resources,
claims against the enterprise (at a point of time) and changes in those economic resources
and claims caused by economic exchanges (during a time period).
The CF [4] defines an economic resource as a right that has the potential to produce
benefits. The CF [4] further postulates that an enterprise controls an economic resource
if it has the present rights and ability to direct the use of the economic resource and obtain
the benefits that flow from it. Economic resources as rights and the claims against
enterprise in EXP are modeled as reified relationships between the enterprise and a
counterparty or community with respect to a thing (underlying object). These rights
generally rest on a foundation of legal rights [4] of Contract and Property Laws as e.g.,
in American property law, a property right is described as a collection of legal relations
between parties with respect to things [25]. However, there is also the civil law that treats
a property right as a relation between a person and an object. The rights definition may
be regarded as the specification of permitted actions:
actions with the rights themselves, e.g. a right to sell a “right to receive”;
actions with the underlying object to be performed for the benefit of the
enterprise by itself, e.g. a right to control the use of a leased object; or
actions that another party has a present obligation to perform for the benefit of
the enterprise, e.g. a right to receive a service.
The party (or parties) for a particular right or exchange could be an Economic agent
– a specific person or an enterprise, a group of people or enterprises (community), or
society at large. The enterprise (E) is the focal party for our model and a counterparty
(C) - the other party that participates in an exchange with the E. The E is separate and
distinct from all the parties associated with the E, it is a going concern. Specialized roles
of the parties are distinguished for different types of exchanges and their phases. Two
special roles for the core ontology are counteragents participating in exchanges affecting
claims against the enterprise: 1) Creditors (CR) - in exchanges affecting liabilities of the
E in the role of Debtor and 2) Owners (O) - holders of equity claims.
The financial effects of economic exchanges of an E, comprising its activities (i.e.
“as a result of past events” [4]), are classified into the following kinds of relationships:
An asset (A) is a present economic resource controlled by the E.
A liability (L) is a present obligation of the E to transfer an economic resource.
Equity (OE) is the residual interest in the A of the E after deducting all its L.
Income (I) is increases in A or decreases in L that result in increases in OE, other
than those relating to contributions (OEC) from O.
Expenses (S) are decreases in A or increases in L that result in decreases in OE,
other than those relating to distributions (OED) to O.
With a general constraint of values for the E and for each economic event:
A = L + OE + OEC – OED + I - S.
To be recognized in AIS, an economic resource or claim must be measured. In many
cases, measurements must be estimated and are subject to uncertainty. Measures are
based on historical cost or on current value measurement method.
Ijiri [1] defines Economic commitment as “an agreement to execute an economic
event in a well-defined future that will result in either an increase of economic resources
or a decrease of economic resources” and suggests extending economic resource control
recognition criteria to agreements, forecasts, and budgets. The existing accounting,
though, recognizes only such obligations of future events, that are enforceable by law,
natural law or are constructive [4].
3. Complex economic exchange model description
3.1. Social relator based Economic relator and Economic exchange pattern
We have conceived of an Economic exchange as an offering of interaction made by one
of two parties, followed by its acceptance by the counterparty resulting in an agreement,
that is fulfilled by delivery or by incurring obligations [31].
UFO-S covers the backbone of an economic exchange – the actions in the form of
services. Actions comprise any economic exchange, but in addition, the EXP economic
exchange specializes UFO-S by adding delivery process steps, incurring and settling
obligations, equity changes, economic resources - their change and measurement. While
generally the services are distinguished from goods as activities of non-separable
production and consumption, we don’t see anything in the model of UFO-S that restricts
modeling a goods transfer. In the running example, a meal serving in a restaurant might
be separated from its consumption, e.g., by taking the meal home.
Our economic exchange patterns of the enterprise’s interactions with a counterparty
employs the Social relator pattern with its axioms [7], see Fig 1. If one party has an
economic commitment, it follows that another party (or parties) has an economic claim.
In CF, the social relator is exemplified by the following statement: “If one party has an
obligation to transfer an economic resource (a liability), it follows that another party (or
parties) has a right to receive that resource (an asset)” [4, para 4.25].
We make the following extensions to the UFO-S model because of our AIS and
enterprise-centric orientation: We introduce the Economic relator and a pattern, see Fig
2, as a specialization of the Social relator, that has an exchange value ascribed (a
monetary measurement) to the involved modes. We distinguish two subtypes of this
pattern: 1) E commitment is an economic relator where the enterprise plays the role of
the committer, and 2) E claim is an economic relator where the enterprise plays the role
of the claimer. Because the corresponding [7] modes of a counterparty are counterparts
they will be omitted when depicting the economic relator. The abovementioned relators
may be also referred as (Counterparty) C claim and C commitment respectively. The
Economic resources (Assets) of the enterprise defined in CF are represented by E claim
relator, and Counterparty Claims against enterprise (Liabilities, Equity) are represented
by E Commitment relator. The Economic relators may be conditioned (and thus
classified) on some future events, crucial for our model are the following conditions:
completion or breach of a certain economic process;
completion of an investment process or liquidation of the enterprise;
passage of time.
The economic relators refer to a time period and an underlying object or its function
(more details in Section 3.4). We ascribe (a measurement) exchange value - V to the
economic relator and /events for economic relator exchange value increase/decrease.
We omit “service” for all the concepts due to different usage of service term in accounting
and imply rights and control. In EXP, we use “E” qualifier for the Enterprise; we use “C”
qualifier for the Counterparty; and we use “O” qualifier for the Enterprise Owners as
prefixes of their roles, modes, and relators that mediate (m) them. Generally, the E
qualifier will be omitted for the economic relators, but not for the agent roles.
As shown in Fig 2 we introduce an AIS domain-related pattern of Economic
exchange that will further be applied for the exchange lifecycle phases and sub-phases
of delivery. Fulfilling some [meta-]commitments/claims Economic exchange decreases
commitments/claims represented by Economic relators for total value V- and increases
other commitments/claims for value V+. There are altogether four combinations for
commitment/claim exchange that we group into two cause and effect action kinds. We
use transfer for enterprise actions towards the benefit of the counterparty and receive for
counterparty actions towards the benefit of the enterprise. We define:
A transfer is the enterprise’s action, governed by the terms and conditions,
agreed with and for the benefit of the counterparty, fulfilling a [meta-]
commitment. It exchanges E claim decreases (E commitment increases) for
other E claim increases.
A receive is the result of the counterparty’s action, governed by the terms and
conditions, agreed with and for the benefit of the enterprise, fulfilling a [meta-]
claim. It exchanges E claim increases (E commitment decreases) for other E
commitment increases.
The increases/decreases named as expenses are decreases of commitments to the
owners, and those named as income are increases of commitments to the owners and are
a generalization of the expenses and income defined in the subsection 2.2 where they
increase/decrease the equity.
Figure 2. Abridged OntoUML diagram: E relator with the enterprise in the role of Committer; E relator with
the enterprise in the role of Claimer; and Economic exchange.
3.2. Exchange Offer.
In an analogy with UFO-S, at the beginning of an exchange relation, there is a promise
of the enterprise, a speech act that establishes a pattern of commitments and
corresponding counterparty-claims, that is called enterprise offer, and the resulting
pattern of Enterprise offering relationship. The offer and intention are for the exchange
and involves a conditional promise as defended by Bach [22]. As depicted in Fig 3(a) an
enterprise offer event results in the establishment of an offering – a pair of economic
relators, between the enterprise as Offering committer and a Target community. An
offering relationship is composed of the enterprise offering E commitments (promises)
with expected enterprise offering E claims (considerations) from the offering committer
towards the target community, using the economic exchange pattern.
Figure 3. Abridged OntoUML diagram of Economic exchange planning phase. (a) Enterprise offering; (b)
Counterparty offering; (c) Agreement
The actual content of offering promises and considerations is described in offering
descriptions i.e., normative descriptions in UFO; and in EXP contains the Transfer plans,
that include the main features of an economic resource control transfer/use (see
subsection 3.3). Similarly, for the Receive plans, that are offered for committing by the
Counterparty. The enterprise’s offering promise is conditional – it is committing if the
counterparty will counter-commit. Offering commitments in EXP may be meta-
commitments as in [7], or concrete ones.
Offering-committer is the role played by agents when these agents commit
themselves to a target community by an offer event. In terms of UFO, the roles are
Rolemixin, since it can be instantiated by parties of different kinds, e.g., persons and
enterprises or their agents. According to [7], Target community is a collective UFO
pattern that refers to the loosely coupled group of agents that constitute the community
to which the exchange is being offered.
Since we take an enterprise-centric view, as in accounting, in EXP we must regard
the enterprise also as a receiver of the counterparty’s offer (which is not necessarily a
counteroffer for a previous one), and the enterprise as a member of counterparty’s target
community. The pattern diagram, in this case, is similar to the provider case and is shown
in Fig 3(b).
3.3. Exchange Agreement Acceptance (Negotiation).
According to UFO-S, an offering (either of enterprise or counterparty) is a base for an
agreement negotiation event, see the agreement pattern in Fig 3(c), based again on the
economic exchange pattern. If the (negotiation) acceptance succeeds, an exchange
agreement is established, and the enterprise starts to play the role of the committer while
the counterparty starts to play the role of counterparty committer. Committer roles are
accountable for governing the fulfillment of the agreement. Like an offering, an
agreement is composed of reciprocal clauses of E commitment (promise) and E claim
(contribution) pairs. However, in an agreement, these pairs are mutually accepted. An
agreement should conform to what was previously established in the corresponding
offering. As in the case of an offer, what is agreed between the parties (reciprocal
commitments and counter-claims of both E and C) is described in agreement description.
In EXP we additionally to UFO-S distinguish the meta-agreements and concrete
agreements.
In our model, in accordance with [14] we introduce intentional economic relators –
Agreement promise and Agreement consideration (similarly for Offering and
Counterparty offering, but without other party’s acceptance). The intentional resources
allow specifying the management of offering and agreement producing processes with
the specializations of exchange patterns, for details see [14]. We define:
A promise is the enterprise’s commitment to transfer, motivated and conditioned
by reciprocal consideration (agreed or offered).
A consideration is the enterprise’s claim to receive, a counterpart of a
counterparty’s commitment - a promise to transfer.
An offering or agreement is the enterprise’s commitment to exchange for offered or
agreed claim. The agreement (offering) promises and considerations are fulfilled as
interrelated and not separable within clauses of the agreement (offering), they are
transformed to separate objects in delivery phase.
An enterprise is established by an agreement called Articles of association. In
addition to the enterprise name, purpose, etc. it establishes: O investment consideration
to be fulfilled by contributions to the E and E return on investment promise to the O for
dividends and residual obligations to be fulfilled by distributions to the O. The Articles
may be regarded also as initiating of an overall periodic process that should increase
equity and is reflected in by including the expense/income changes in the economic
exchange pattern.
The CF refers to an agreement as an executory contract [4] that is equally
unperformed: neither party has fulfilled any of its obligations [promises], or both parties
have fulfilled their obligations partially and to an equal extent. Such unperformed
agreements are not recognized in Financial reports but are used in several ways for
disclosing, measurement, “production” of other intentional and recognized resources and
claims, thus need to be included in the AIS concepts.
3.4. Exchange Delivery and obligation incurring actions.
Delivery concerns the execution of actions aimed at fulfilling the commitments
established in the agreement [7]. The Delivery process in EXP is a substantial
specialization of UFO-S delivery phase pattern, using the EXP economic exchange
pattern in four (eight) different ways.
First (see e.g. (1) in Fig.4), because in EXP we assume that the agreement promise
fulfillment may be specified and/or executed by two and more partial actions
(Transfer/Receive), that leads to introducing in process obligations (AIP/LIP, here and
further respectively).
Second, because after completing of the fulfillment process, the in process
obligations are transformed into the opposite unconditional obligations
(Receivable/Transferable) specified by agreement consideration.
Third, the unconditional obligation settlement may be specified and/or executed by
two or more partial actions (Receive/Transfer), that again leads to maintaining in process
obligations (LIP/AIP).
Fourth, these in process obligations after completing the settlement, finally settle
the opposite unconditional obligations (Transferable/Receivable).
These processes are depicted in Fig. 4 which constitutes the Complex economic
exchange delivery pattern. The exchanges are represented by events in blue color. We
should note that concurrently with the transfer process, according to the agreement or
due to agent’s autonomy [18], the receive process specified by the same agreement clause
may progress. As mentioned earlier, during the delivery phase, equity changes of
contribution (OEC) and distribution (OED), as the fulfillment of the Articles of
association agreement, may occur.
Regarding the running example, the agreement may contain the Caesar Salad and
the Main course to be served by separate actions, each of which will not be considered
separately and thus will incur an AIP, called Contract asset in [5]. Completion of the
meal serving will cause Contract asset to convert into a Receivable, which is to be settled
by the customer. The customer may pay also before the serving, thus creating LIP –
Contract liability.
Figure 4. A fragment of an OntoUML diagram of the Economic exchange delivery phase. See Fig.5 for the
Economic agent roles. Legend: OED – distributions to the Owners of E, OEC – contributions from the
Owners of E.
Each distinct economic resource or action should contain criteria for partition or
integration governed by the UFO mereological decomposition patterns [8]. The quantity
of the economic resource is one of the bases for its partition, see other bases as economic
resource associations in Fig 5. Fig 5 shows the proposed taxonomy and structure of
economic resources. Obligations are mediated by debtor and creditor roles. For equity
claim, the creditor role is specialized by equity claim holder role. Assets, in general, are
mediated by the Controller role.
Recognizing the universal economic exchange process states and generalizing the
patterns in IFRS standard [5] we suggest in process concepts for inclusion in [4] and
define:
An asset in process (AIP) is the E’s right to receive/settle for partially completed
transfer, conditioned on the fulfillment of the remaining promise/transferable
(realization).
A liability in process (LIP) is the E’s obligation to transfer/settle, for partially
completed receipt, conditioned on the fulfillment of the remaining
consideration/receivable.
A transferable (LT) is a present [unconditional] obligation of the E to transfer,
conditioned on the passage of time.
A receivable (AR) is a present [unconditional] obligation of the counterparty to
transfer, conditioned on the passage of time.
A property right (AO) is a present claim of the E against the community for the
underlying object.
An equity claim of OE is the E’s [residual] obligation to the owners of
transferring the assets of the E after the settlement of all its liabilities
conditioned on the liquidation of the E, and the E’s promise to transfer dividends.
The general constraint for values now may be extended:
AO + AR + AIP = LT + LIP + OE + OEC – OED + I - S.
Figure 5. Abridged OntoUML diagram of Economic resource relators and the mediating roles.
4. Related work
The Domain Ontology for Financial Reporting proposed by [32] is similar to our efforts
but covers reporting issues of the older CF. Concerning the main elements, it doesn’t
cover the interpretation of income and expenses, in process resources, offerings, and
agreements; and phases and processes of economic exchanges. Their work is based on
OWL and not specific upper ontology nor pattern stack.
The recent VDML standard [19] provides value and exchange concepts and patterns
even beyond the economic, generalizes and explains many other important concepts for
value modeling that overlap with our analysis, their planning level though is restricted to
Value-Proposal that is roughly similar to the Offering concept. The further details of
agreements, commitments and obligations and their fulfillments are not regarded. Their
ontology is not grounded in any upper ontology, except for SSM Measurement, and is
not directly applicable to accounting.
Fundamental work on the commitment patterns is provided by Singh et al. [18].
While many concepts are directly comparable in the commitment area we differ from
Singh in the elaboration of reciprocity and economic resources, economic or accounting
view.
As mentioned earlier, REA Ontology and its patterns [2, 3] is often used for teaching
in the AIS courses but has not received traction in the Accounting domain. As concluded
in [26]: “Amazingly, in the traditional accounting literature, which is the actual home
base of the [REA] ontology, the [REA] ontology is mainly neglected.” In short, we think
it is due to the prioritization of physical assets transfer ex-post duality, disregarding some
social relationships and valuation flows that are created as possibly intermediate results
of the economic processes.
There are obvious similarities between our economic exchange and the transaction
in DEMO Enterprise Ontology [13] in terms of phases. However, there are also important
differences. The economic exchange is always assuming economic reciprocity and, in
the end, is concerned about economic resources. The commitment is not only for
coordination but also has economic value. The order (agreement) phase in EXP is not
generally followed by one execution phase and one result phase, but multiple partial
execution – result (delivery) phases with possible reciprocal actions, leading to the final
result and reciprocal obligations, facilitating the interaction.
5. Conclusions
The UFO and UFO-S ontology patterns were regarded for application by analogy and
extension in the engineering of a core ontology for AIS. The new IASB Conceptual
Framework for Financial Reporting was used as a main source of the domain knowledge,
and an economic exchange pattern for the core ontology for AIS was proposed.
Economic exchange pattern was specialized to specify offered, agreed, partial action,
settlement and realization economic exchange patterns. The economic resources and
claims of the enterprise affected by economic exchanges are represented by patterns of
economic relators including offerings, agreements, (unconditional, in process and
residual) obligations and property rights. The Conceptual model, engineered using
OntoUML, is an important step towards the development of a Core ontology and
Ontology Pattern Language for AIS.
The UFO provides a solid concept and pattern base for the researched domain. The
UFO-S ontology was extended to cover reciprocity, obligations, delivery process and
measurement issues for AIS. The OntoUML language and tool have a potential for
creating formalized and conveniently shareable ontologies for our domain. Some
drawback was the inability to introduce new stereotypes, that have been created for UFO-
B, C and other ontologies, as well as a difficulty to express behavior and interaction in a
UML class diagram profile. The pattern extraction capabilities for reuse and some other
features were not ready yet for engineering.
Concerning the modeling of the IASB CF and the new standards, we suggest to
integrate the concepts of intentional economic relators and spread the value assessment
and production patterns to planning level; and generalize and prioritize process
assets/liabilities. A UFO mereological pattern application is needed for processes,
economic resources and particularly for “bundles of rights” which are treated in [4] as
“sets” or collectives, while in fact they are functional complexes [8].
One of the features of the OPLs in addition to the choice and other operators may be
the instantiation of the view of a particular agent, location or time. Another feature for
OPL languages could be the generalizing of sub-ontology patterns into core ontology.
The future directions involve elaborating the AIS ontology formalization, creating
EXP-OPL pattern application scripts [24] for developing IFRS sub-ontologies. The S-
OPL didn’t play a significant role yet for engineering of EXP because it is also a core
ontology that extends the whole pattern complex of UFO-S, but S-OPL will be the base
for the EXP-OPL.
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