| Current software modeling techniques emphasize the modeling of individual software systems using formal modeling tools, such as the Unified Modeling Language. With recent advances in the conceptualization of software ecosystems, the need for modeling techniques capable of describing the interaction between diverse software systems within the environment in which they are created and used has become apparent. This dissertation presents a semantic framework for the modeling of software ecosystems, including a concept-map based notation. Concretely, this modeling framework comprises a semantic web ontology with three classes and two properties. As validated by application to three app-centric software ecosystem case studies, this modeling framework is uniquely suited to describe software ecosystems. This suitability stems from the mechanisms provided by the semantic model for integrating the diverse elements of a software ecosystem and for spanning multiple levels of abstraction and decomposition. Additionally, the semantic modeling framework proposed here exposes evolving software ecosystems to graph analysis by representing their architecture in the form of a directed graph.;Keywords: Software Ecosystems, Software Modeling, Software Architecture, Semantic Modeling. |
