Evaluation of the Ontological Completeness and Clarity of Object-Oriented Conceptual Modelling Grammars

Abstract

Several research studies have concluded that modelling grammars that support the Object-Oriented (OO) methodology focus more on modelling system design and implementation phenomena than real-world phenomena in IS users' domains. Thus, the purpose of this research study was to evaluate the suitability of OO modelling grammars for conceptual modelling. Although the research work focused on one widely used OO modelling grammar—namely, the Unified Modelling Language (UML)—the approach developed can be applied to any OO modelling grammar. The first phase of this research study focused on evaluating all UML constructs and identifying a subset of UML constructs that are capable of representing real-world phenomena in user domains. The second phase was an empirical evaluation of the identified subset of UML constructs. The results of this empirical evaluation suggest that instead of using all UML constructs the subset of UML constructs is better suited for conceptual modelling.