Mapping MOF-based Requirements Representations to Ontologies for Software Reuse

In this paper, we combine MOF-based software representations and description logic-based mechanisms for facilitating software reuse. All software representations (requirements specifications, design models, code) arising from one project are combined in a software case and stored in a repository for later retrieval. For reuse purposes, we use requirements as search indexes. We map metamodel-based requirements specifications to an ontology and use a Description Logic reasoner for classification. This makes implicit taxonomical relations explicit. The inferred taxonomical hierarchy is then used to compute the taxonomical similarity between the current (initial) requirements and those in the repository. Doing so, we retrieve software cases with a high reuse potential. This approach has already been validated in an industrial context.