An Ontology-based Approach for Sharing, Integrating, and Retrieving Architectural Knowledge

Abstract

The Architectural knowledge (AK) generated during software architecture projects is a valuable asset for software organizations. Although many organizations have adopted supporting tools to capture the produced AK, still there exist some difficulties in making it available to be retrieved by the consumers. Moreover, the boundaries of knowledge of an organization can be expanded to AK repositories that are shared or made public by other organizations. Thus, organizations have to deal with heterogeneity in knowledge representation, which makes complex the integration of knowledge from several sources. There is a need of an approach for sharing, integrating, and retrieving AK from various sources, which enables organizations to revisit and retrieve both their own and others' past decisions, as a basis for upcoming decisions. This paper describes an ontology-based approach for sharing, integrating, and retrieving knowledge from different AK sources, which is based on ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010. A proof of concept was developed to apply the approach on an AK management tool, and a scenario of knowledge retrieving was carried out.