  This paper studies the role that ontologies can play in establishing
conceptual data models during the process of information systems development. A
mapping algorithm has been proposed and embedded in a special purpose
Transformation-Engine to generate a conceptual data model from a given domain
ontology. In addition, this paper focuses on applying the proposed approach to
a bioinformatics context as the nature of biological data is considered a
barrier in representing biological conceptual data models. Both quantitative
and qualitative methods have been adopted to critically evaluate this new
approach. The results of this evaluation indicate that the quality of the
generated conceptual data models can reflect the problem domain entities and
the associations between them. The results are encouraging and support the
potential role that this approach can play in providing a suitable starting
point for conceptual data model development.
