SEKE 2012 Proceedings - Knowledge Systems Institute

A functionality is the ability of a resource to be used for
achieving a specific purpose. In this sense the resource owning
the functionality is passively used during a process execution
so that it is specific to Resource Objects. Moreover, the concept
of competency used in human capital and business resources
management allows stakeholders and stockholders to reach
resources unification and integration to optimize the capacity
needed to achieve the vision, mission and objectives of their
organization.
Following [4], a competency is an aptitude to know, to know
how and to behave while [5] defines competencies as statements
that someone, and more generally some resource, can
demonstrate the application of a generic skill to some knowledge,
with a certain degree of performance. In other words,
competencies are observable skills, knowledge or know-how
defined in terms of behaviors and processes required for
performing job and business activities in a successful way.
They are consequently owned by resources able to behave
i.e. Resource Agents (see section II for a complete justification
and definition). Knowledge and learning are specific
to human/organizational resources and artificial intelligence
systems. Behavior can be considered as the ability owned
by Resource Agents, making them useful in an operational
context.
In the context of the proposed ontology, resources are thus
components encapsulating functionalities and competencies.
What fundamentally distinguishes those two concepts is that:
• a functionality is transparent in the sense that the environment
is perfectly aware of what the Resource Object
can deliver at defined quality level. The functional offer
of Resource Objects can be said to be stable since they
cannot acquire more functionalities - or lose existing
functionalities - unless being transformed (or degraded);
• a competency is partially hidden since initial evaluation is
necessary to assess the quality level at which a Resource
Agent can deliver it; it is also evolutionary since it can be
delivered at higher quality level later into the system life
cycle thanks to the inherent ability to learn from Resource
Agents.
Resources can nevertheless not always lead to an absolute
and successful achievement of the functionalities or competencies
they advertise so that a quality level should be associated
to each of them. Competencies are indeed not neutral
and are furnished following a quality level so that without
being perfectly rational, their realization is non-deterministic
and must be estimated. The probabilistic measure is, in our
model, encapsulated in the concept of quality level; we indeed
consider the probability as being an aspect of the quality
ontology presented hereby. A Resource Agent providing a
competency with a lower realization rate will be attributed
a lower quality level following the particular quality ontology.
Quality ontologies are domain specific and such a characterization
is positioned into the proposed resource ontology
but not instantiated (see Section III). Similarly, furnishing
competencies sometimes requires resource composition – i.e.,
the use of a defined set of resources configured in a defined
way – so that resource hierarchization is required (as detailed
in Section III-C). Quality ontology proposal we can link this
work to are provided in [6].
Moreover, competencies can also be acquired in the case of
an individual or an organization through formal or non-formal
procedures. This suggests Resource Agents evaluation through
a formal process. For example, an ISO accreditation is, for
an organization (which is here a Resource Agent) receiving
it, a certification to have competencies to furnish a product
or a service at some defined minimal quality level. In the
same way, the follow-up and successful achievement of a
study program in a given school or university is a process
for a human (which is here a Resource Agent) to acquire
and accreditate (through the obtention of a diploma) defined
competencies at a specified quality level. The processes of
acquisition and assessment of competencies within particular
(or a particular set of) resources is outside the scope of this
paper. Functionality and competency ontologies are domain
specific and such a characterization is positioned into the
proposed resource ontology but not instantiated (see Section
III). Specific competency ontology proposals we can link this
work to are provided into [4], [5].
B. Resources, Actors and Services
In high level analysis formalisms such as the i* modeling
framework ([7]), human or machine resources can be modeled
as actors depending on each other involved in the achievement
services; this vision assumes an intentional dimension and
two parties, the service consumer and the service provider.
With respect to the service ontology presented in [8], this is the
Service Commitment level (prescriptive level) but the resource
ontology we propose in this paper is (also with respect to
[8]) at Service Process (design and implementation levels).
Following [9], Services are “high-level” elements i.e., coarsegrained
granules of information that encapsulate an entire or
a set of business processes. That is consequently the level
where service consumers and service providers are specified
and, since the proposed ontology is at service process level we
do not specify them into the contractual aspects of resource
reservation and use (see section III-B).
III. AN ONTOLOGY FOR RESOURCE REPRESENTATION
We define in this section a conceptual model for resource
representation. In this perspective, Figure 1 depicts the relevant
concepts and their dependencies using a class model [10].
A. Basic Concepts
Services require, for their proper execution (or realization),
a series of Functionalities and Competencies at a defined
QualityLevel furnished by one or more Resources. The use
of a Resource by a Service is only conceivable by setting
up a Contract for a defined period of time and defined
QualityLevel and Cost. All of the system Resources are kept
in the ResourceList while their “real-time” availability is given
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