Communication is one of the most important aspects of software engineering. Many projects encounter serious problems, and even fail, because the stakeholders involved have different understandings of the problem and use different terminologies. Ontologies can help improve such communication, and are the subject of this very interesting book.

The book should not be considered as a text written by ontology experts for ontology experts, but as one written by people who use the ontologies for the applications mentioned. The editors have collected 11 extraordinary papers (chapters) and organized them into three parts: an introductory part, a part composed of ontologies that conceptualize a software engineering and technology (SET) domain or subdomain, and a part where some proposals on the use of ontologies as software artifacts in some software processes and technologies are described.

The introductory part consists of two chapters. The first chapter, “Ontological Engineering: Principles, Methods, Tools and Languages,” introduces the concepts and main aspects of ontological engineering. The second chapter, “Using Ontologies in Software Engineering and Technology,” deals with the state-of-the-art use of ontologies in SET, and defines a taxonomy for classifying the uses of ontologies in SET.

The second part of the book consists of five chapters. The first presents the engineering of the ontology for the software engineering body of knowledge. The next presents an ontology for software development methodologies and endeavors. Chapter 5 deals with a software maintenance ontology, and chapter 6 describes an ontology for software measurement. The closing chapter of the second part explains an ontological approach to SQL:2003.

The third part of the book begins with a chapter describing the Object Management Group ontology definition metamodel. Chapter 9 deals with ontologies, metamodels, and the model-driven paradigm. The next chapter presents the use of ontologies in software development environments. The last chapter deals with semantic upgrade and the publication of legacy data. Every chapter ends with an impressive list of references.

The editors’ research group, The Alarcos Group, has created a Web site (http://alarcos.inf-cr.uclm.es/ontoset) to store and share, in an open way and by using standardized formats, examples of interesting ontologies in the SET discipline. In addition to the examples in the book, other examples of ontologies from the international community can be studied on this site. This is an extremely important and useful complement to the book.

It is difficult to find another book that offers such high-quality insight into ontologies and provides the reader with a specific view of applications of ontologies in SET. By presenting advanced uses of ontologies, this book can benefit a wide range of highly educated software engineering researchers and practitioners: professors, postgraduate students, and professionals in industrial research and development departments. Although the book is a collection of papers by different authors with different styles, it is well written and will be enjoyable for all involved in the software engineering domain. It is definitely something readers will return to from time to time to gather some fresh ideas that can be applied to different applications.