Positioning and Formalizing the REA Enterprise Ontology

• DOI: 10.2308/jis.2008.22.2.219
• Publication Date: 2008-10-24T13:24:36Z
• Authors: Frederik Gailly; Wim Laurier; Geert Poels
• Keywords: 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology

ABSTRACT: Recent Resource, Event, Agent (REA) research has focused on defining and theoretically justifying the ontology's contents. Here, we elaborate on more practical issues related to REA. First, we classify REA and its applications using ontology classification schemes and application frameworks. This analysis clarifies REA's application potential but also reveals weaknesses that may impede its operationalization. Next, we propose a new REA ontology specification that uses a Unified Modeling Language (UML) profile for graphically representing ontologies. This new specification is more complete and precise than previously available specifications, without compromising understandability. It can easily be transformed into a machine-readable representation for automatic processing, which is a prerequisite for the successful application of REA in business modeling, software engineering, knowledge representation, and interoperability creation. The paper ends with a proof of concept application in which a formal Ontology Web Language (OWL) specification of REA is fed into the Prote´ge´ knowledge representation tool and subsequently used for the development of an enterprise schema.