Inproceedings,
Ontology-Driven Business Modelling: Improving the Conceptual Representation of the REA Ontology
Conceptual Modeling - ER 2007, page 407--422. Springer, (2008)
Abstract
Business modelling research is increasingly interested in exploring how domain ontologies can be used as reference modelsfor business models. The Resource Event Agent (REA) ontology is a primary candidate for ontology-driven modelling of businessprocesses because the REA point of view on business reality is close to the conceptual modelling perspective on business models.In this paper Ontology Engineering principles are employed to reengineer REA in order to make it more suitable for ontology-drivenbusiness modelling. The new conceptual representation of REA that we propose uses a single representation formalism, includesa more complete domain axiomatizat-ion (containing definitions of concepts, concept relations and ontological axioms), andis proposed as a generic model that can be instantiated to create valid business models. The effects of these proposed improvementson REA-driven business modelling are demonstrated using a business modelling example.
