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

["David C. Hay" <dch@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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