For many years in the 1980s and 1990s, there was some agreement that a
semantic model had three components:
·
Declarations
·
Procedures
·
Constraints
One of the definitive sources for this 3-part structure was the 1982 data
modeling book by Tsichritzis and Lochovsky, but other data modeling sources of
the times used the same distinctions. There was also Sowa’s notion
of “conceptual relativity” which hinted that some kinds of
knowledge could be represented in more than one of these ways (like CurrentAge
which could be either a declarative or a procedural representation), so the
choices were in many cases relative.
My question concerns the efficacy of this three part structure with
regard to ontologies. Is there a source defining ontologies that uses
this same set of distinctions? Is the structure a viable way to
compartmentalize an ontology’s description (subject to conceptual
relativity arguments of course)?
William E. McCarthy
Michigan
State University
517-432-2913
mccarthy@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.msu.edu/user/mccarth4