The modelling tool Vanguard System was chosen because it handles Units and uncertainty well something that was necessary for the DATUM project with Rolls-Royce as partners (Scanlan et. al, 2006). The same advantage was the case for the PhD because of the need for extensibility such as risk and uncertainty modelling. Other advantages of Vanguard System were ease of installation and use, ease of linking to spreadsheets and databases, facilities for web enabling of models, and the ease with which formulae can be entered and linked with a high level programming language where necessary (similar to spreadsheets but with a tree based user interface). Experimentation with Protégé showed it was possible to translate the Protégé tree into a Vanguard System tree. This fit in well with the stepped translation to be developed. The open standard nature of Protégé made it possible to use this software without being locked in to it. Tools such as TopBraid Composer can provide additional higher level functionality such as an improved user interface and more tools for user interaction and modelling by end-users so is future work.
There was a need for the DATUM project and for the PhD to minimise programming, so Jena was not used, but Leavers' (2008) MSc project used this effectively, and there was regular contact with the developers of ACUITy (Aragones et. al., 2006), to examine how that more software centred approach was used. Given more time that approach could have been used. Metatomix M3t4 was also used effectively as a high level tool to interact with Jena. So results of research with Jena and/or ACUITy and m3t4 would have shown similar results to the approach of using Protégé and Vanguard System.
These types of tools improve with research and development each year so reproducing this research is becoming easier. New ways of modelling at high level with involvement of end-users is thus practical.
References
Jena - A Semantic Web Framework for Java [online]. Available from: http://jena.sourceforge.net/ [Accessed 21 April 2011].
Leaver, N. (2008) Using RDF as an Enabling Technology. MSc. Dissertation, University of the West of England, Bristol.
Metatomix M3t4 Dashboard [online]. Available from: http://wiki.m3t4.com/homepage.action [Accessed 21 April 2011].
Protégé Welcome to Protégé [online]. Available from: http://protege.stanford.edu/
[Accessed 21 April 2011].
Scanlan, J., Rao, A., Bru, C., Hale, P., Marsh, R., 2006. DATUM Project: Cost Estimating Environment for Support of Aerospace Design Decision Making. Journal of Aircraft, 43(4).
TopBraid Composer, The Complete Semantic Modeling Toolset [online]. Available from: http://www.topquadrant.com/products/TB_Composer.html [Accessed 21 April 2011].
Vanguard System [online]. Available from: http://www.vanguardsw.com/solutions/application/modeling-and-simulation/
[Accessed 21 April 2011].
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