Towards an Ontology for the Foundations of Software Languages

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Foundations of Software Languages ontology (FSL), aiming to unify concepts and tools in software language research to enhance education and interdisciplinary understanding.

Contribution

It presents the first release of FSL, developed through a standard methodology and augmented with GenAI for ontology engineering tasks.

Findings

FSL connects multiple software language categories and concepts.

GenAI effectively supports ontology development processes.

FSL serves as a knowledge resource for CS education.

Abstract

The notion of software languages subsumes programming languages, modeling languages, and yet many other types of languages used in software engineering. The emerging ontology `Foundations of Software Languages' (FSL) organizes the foundations underlying software languages. We are concerned with language categories, language concepts, associated tools and methodological approaches, the formal systems or other formal entities underlying software languages, and the embedding of software languages into into software engineering activities. The primary objective of FSL is to serve as a knowledge resource in Computer Science education by connecting several subject areas in a principled manner. The first release of FSL (V1), as discussed in this paper, was built through a relatively standard methodology involving common steps for expectations, reuse, conceptualization, formalization, and validation. We leveraged GenAI to support ontology engineering (discovery, classification, linkage, completion, and transformation).