A Case Study in Using Protégé-2000 as a Tool for CommonKADS

This article describes a case study in which Protégé-2000 was used to build a tool for constructing CommonKADS knowledge models. The case study tries to capitalize on the strong points of both approaches in the tool-support and modeling areas. We specify the CommonKADS knowledge model as an ontology in the Protégé specification formalism, and define a number of visualizations for the resulting types. The study shows that this type of usage of Protégé-2000 as a “metaCASE” tool is to a large extent feasible. In particular, the flexible class/instance distinction in Protégé is a feature that is needed for undertaking such a metamodeling exercise. The case study revealed a number of problems, such as the representation of rule types. The study also led to a set of new tool requirements, such as extended expressivity of the Protégé forms. Finally, this experience shows how the concrete, operational approach of Protégé and the highly methodological approach of CommonKADS can be combined successfully to provide the middle-ground tool that reduces the gap between a conceptual model and a usable knowledge model.