Combining UML and ontology: An exploratory survey

UML models and ontologies are two knowledge representations with different strengths and weaknesses. Until recently, they were considered unrelated research domains. However, studies investigating their underlying paradigms and the approaches combining these two are increasingly emerging. Nevertheless, the state of the art research covering the relationship between the two is still under exploration. In this paper, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of both domains by conducting a literature review of the relevant research work. In this survey, the relationship between UML and ontology is investigated from both the theoretical and practical perspectives. We present a detailed classification of the existing work based on the considered issues and their practical use cases. Finally, we provide an evaluation of the existing work according to the criteria we identified. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.