Ontological foundations for software requirements with a focus on requirements at runtime

The use of Requirements at Runtime (RRT) is an emerging research area. Many methods and frameworks that make use of requirements models during software execution can be found in the literature. However, there is still a lack of a formal and explicit representation of what RRT are and what are the primary goals of their use. Still, most RRT proposals have their own modeling languages and ways to represent, specify and make use of requirements at runtime, thus resulting in a domain with overloaded concepts. In this paper, we intend to clarify the main notions involved in RRT, establishing an explicit common conceptualization regarding this domain. To do so, we need first to understand what software execution is, as well as what requirements are. Thus, we present three related domain ontologies: the Software Ontology (SwO), an ontology about software nature and execution, the Reference Software Requirements Ontology (RSRO), which addresses what requirements are and types of requirements, and the Runtime Requirements Ontology (RRO), which extends SwO and RSRO to represent the nature and context of RRT. For developing these ontologies, we follow SABiO, a well-established Ontology Engineering method. Moreover, all the three ontologies are grounded in the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) and are integrated into the Software Engineering Ontology Network (SEON). Finally, as prescribed by SABiO, the ontologies are evaluated using ontology verification and validation techniques.