Development of an approach to using a style in software engineering

An ontology-driven approach to applying styles in software engineering is developed in the study. The essence of the approach is to use ontology not only to represent styles but also to control the use of styles when creating and maintaining software. For such purposes, appropriate ontology and developer support tools are provided to represent a style, and tools (reasoners) are created on the ground of the ontological knowledge base to control the application of the style in work products of the software lifecycle phases. Based on descriptive logic, the knowledge base contains two components – terminological (TBox) and factual (ABox). The first component was created in advance by performing a domain analysis. The second component was created when analysing the representation of the corresponding work product. For the purpose of typification in the context of the developed approach, templates for the kernel ontology of the software engineering style were created by analysing the concept of style in different domains. The basic characteristics of style as a domain-independent concept, which are presented in the templates, are formulated in the article. In this case, the Work Product Pattern Application pattern of the Unified Foundational Ontology is used to select the number of templates needed to represent the style. The pattern describes actions that may exist regarding the Work Product style. An example of using the approach is considered by investigating the proposed ontology-driven method for programming style application in software engineering and building the architecture of the tool that implements it. Protege use shows how to build the ontology of a programming style and programmer support. The architecture of the tool for controlling the application of style is developed and implemented in a work product of the design phase – a programme text. The basis of the architecture is the knowledge base of the corresponding style. The terminological component of the knowledge base contains information regarding programming languages and styles, and it is created in advance by the ontology developer. The actual component is created by the reasoner for each representation of the work product – the programme text. The tools developed in the context of the proposed approach automate the processes that take place when applying styles to work products of the software lifecycle phases.