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[ontolog-forum] Enterprise Model Patterns - An Ontology?

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "David C. Hay" <dch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:05:34 -0600
Message-id: <7.0.0.16.2.20111207105505.03771e00@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
At the risk of committing serious hubris, I have created my own version of a "universal" ontology. It is in the form of a set of data model patterns.  My first cut at this was some 16 years ago with my first book, Data Model Patterns:Conventions of Thought.  That was before I knew about ontologies.  I was just trying to create some useful standard data models for standard business situations. 

This year I published the successor to that book, Enterprise Model Patterns: Describing the World. It is more comprehensive, and I dealt with the issue of "how abstract should the model be?" by presenting the world according to David Hay at four levels of abstraction:

Level 1 is a generic model of an enterprise, in terms of people and organizations, geographic locations, physical resources, activities and events, and time.

Level 0 is a template for these, plus "meta" models of accounting and document management. (Each of these topics itself is connected to the entire rest of the world.) 

Level 2 consists of composites of the Level 1 elements to describe specific functional areas: human resources, contracts, etc. 

The assumption is that most modeling requirements for most companies can be handled by the Level 0-2 models.  But in each industry, there is some part that requires special attention.  So, for Level 3, I selected five that I happen to know something about: Criminal Justice, Microbiology, Financial Institutions, Highway Design, and Oil Well Design.

Since this is a structured representation of a domain, in terms of defined classes and their relationships to each other, with the ability to draw inferences, it seems to me like an ontology.

I welcome anyone's response.

Dave Hay



At 11:14 PM 12/6/2011, you wrote:
On 12/6/2011 1:32 PM, AzamatAbdoullaev wrote:
> The schema.org's team has chosen popular promises, shirking all sorts of
> "intellectualese" as ontology, formal logic, etc: "be simple, and the web
> masses will follow you."

The vocabulary for schema.org is more like WordNet.  It a taxonomy
of useful terms, but it should not be considered an ontology.

It is also similar to other things such as GoodRelations, which
also has a vocabulary of useful terms.  Both of them are at about
the same level.  The fact that one uses OWL and the other doesn't
is irrelevant.

> Many issues (with smart web applications and semantic web technologies) are
> coming from the lack of commitment to a common ontology, as a universal,
> referenceable system of meanings, a guarantee of consistency, completeness
> and understanding, serving as a solid foundation for
> data/information/knowledge indexing, metatagging, retrieval, and
> communicating.

It is impossible to have a consistent, universal ontology of every
possible way of thinking by everybody on the planet.

It might be possible to have a single universal consistent ontology
of the way God sees the universe.  But his revelations -- at least
the ones that have been handed down to us -- tend to be rather
enigmatic and incomplete.

So we just have to muddle through with the best we can get from
science.  And the task of science is very incomplete.

John
 
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