Software Reuse as Ontology Negotiation

We describe reuse as a process of matching needs with product descriptions. The challenges of reuse stem from the fact that neither needs nor products are ever fully described. The process of uncovering the true meaning of both the need and the candidate product is, we argue, a process of ontology negotiation, that is, of mapping the terms of one ontology to those of another through a series of question and answers. Without such a negotiation process, ontologies themselves provide little value for reuse beyond existing practice in domain modeling. We describe the ontology negotiation process as it occurs in a space-system application in which end-users “program” new functions by composing reusable components.

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