Agent Roles, Qua Individuals and the Counting Problem

Despite the relevance of the concept of role for conceptual modeling and agent-orientation, there is still in the literature a lack of consensus on the meaning of this notion and how it should be incorporated in existing conceptual modeling languages and frameworks. In this paper, we offer a contribution to this problem by employing a well-founded reference ontology (UFO) to analyze and reconcile two competing notions of role existing in the conceptual modeling literature. Moreover, a modeling solution based on this ontology is proposed, which incorporates the benefit of the two approaches analyzed.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: SELMAS
• Authors: Giancarlo Guizzardi
• Keywords: Conceptual Modeling, Conceptual Modeling Languages, Conceptual Modeling Literature, SELMAS 2005, Software Engineering