An Object-Oriented Metamodel for Bunge-Wand-Weber Ontology

A UML based metamodel for Bunge-Wand-Weber (BWW) ontology is presented. BWW ontology is a generic framework for analysis and conceptualization of real world objects. It includes categories that can be applied to analyze and classify objects found in an information system. In the context of BWW ontology, the metamodel is a representation of the ontological categories and relationships among them. An objective behind developing an object-oriented metamodel has been to model BWW ontology in terms of widely used notions in software development. The main contributions of this paper are a classification for ontological categories, a description template, and representations through UML and typed based models.