On the importance of truly ontological distinctions for standardizations: A case study in the domain of telecommunications

Standards are documents that aim to define norms and common understanding of a subject by a group of people. In order to accomplish this purpose, these documents must define its terms and concepts in a clear and unambiguous way. Standards can be written in two different ways: by informal specificati...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computer standards and interfaces 2016-02, Vol.44, p.28-41
Main Authors: Barcelos, Pedro Paulo F, Reginato, Cassio C, Monteiro, Maxwell E, Garcia, Anilton S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Formal specification
Knowledge representation
Natural language (computers)
Norms
Specifications
Standardization
Telecommunications
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Standards are documents that aim to define norms and common understanding of a subject by a group of people. In order to accomplish this purpose, these documents must define its terms and concepts in a clear and unambiguous way. Standards can be written in two different ways: by informal specification (e.g. natural language) or formal specification (e.g. math-based languages or diagrammatic ones). Remarkable papers have already shown how well-founded ontology languages provide resources for the specification's author to better distinguish concepts and relations meanings, resulting in a better specification. This paper has the objective to expose the importance of truly ontological distinctions for standardizations. To achieve this objective, we evaluate a math-based formal specification, in Z notation, using a well-founded ontology language for a telecommunications case study, the ITU-T Recommendation G.805. The results confirm that truly ontological distinctions are essential for dear and unambiguous specifications.
ISSN:0920-5489
DOI:10.1016/j.csi2015.09.011