Ontologies and Software Modeling: Potentials,
         Experience and Challenges

                             Dragan Gasevic1

   School of Computing and Information Systems, Athabasca University,
           1 University Drive, Athabasca, AB T9S 3A3, Canada
                            dgasevic@acm.org



  Abstract. Model Driven Engineering (MDE) and the Ontologies rep-
  resent two key areas with a far-reaching vision for the future of software
  engineering. The main promise of MDE is to raise the level of abstraction
  from technology-platform-specific concepts to the higher levels of soft-
  ware modeling. Ontologies, on the other hand, are introduced to provide
  formal and explicit definitions of shared conceptualizations different do-
  mains. Besides software engineering, ontologies play the main role other
  areas such as the Semantic Web and information systems.
  Although ontologies and MDE have been developed by two different
  communities, they share a number of principles and goals, and there
  are important synergies that can be achieved by combining them with
  each other. The Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM) standard by the
  OMG can be viewed as a first step towards their happy marriage. While
  this is certainly a big success of the community, there are many open
  research challenges such as the levels of abstraction where ontologies
  and modeling languages can be integrated; tasks in which ontologies and
  software models can be optimally used together; and software processes
  that can fully leverage the potential of this happy marriage.
  In this talk, we will start from the main principles of MDE and ontolo-
  gies, and discuss present achievements and experience gained in various
  projects and domains. Looking to the future, we will then tackle some of
  the key research challenges and discuss some on-going initiatives such as
  the use of ontologies in the development of service-oriented architectures
  and staged configuration of software product lines.