Re: Ontologies with standard behavior of an information domain

Hi Alan & Zille

I suspect my ontologies are very similar to Alan's,
but I use terminology that is a little more like ordinary English.
(see http://mKRmKE.org)

compare
    process has_participant continuant
to
    entity do action done;

process <=> action
continuant <=> entity

actions can have modifying phrases which specify time, object, etc.

I plan to read your references carefully,
but first I have to finish my jury duty.
I'll get back to you soon.

Dick

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alan Ruttenberg" <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>
To: "Zille Huma" <zille.huma@upb.de>
Cc: <semantic-web@w3.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:06 AM
Subject: Re: Ontologies with standard behavior of an information domain


> 
> On May 28, 2008, at 8:36 AM, Zille Huma wrote:
> 
>> Actually, My interest is to use ontologies in business domain and  
>> then define the semantics of web services on the basis of these  
>> business ontologies. For example, in the given example, the  
>> semantics of a HotelBooking web service can be defined more  
>> precisely with an underlying tourism ontology. Thanks for  
>> mentioning the ontologies that also contain standard behavior  
>> information. I am more curious about how the behavior can be  
>> captured in ontology, i.e., what is the structure of any behavioral  
>> node in an ontology.  What in your opinion is a better way to  
>> capture behavioral information in an ontology, e.g., behavior may  
>> be captured in the form of business process or stand alone  
>> activities, etc.
> 
> Hi Zille,
> 
> In my own work, I've been using the Basic Formal Ontology (http:// 
> ifomis.org/bfo) as the upper level ontology, which defines processes  
> as distinct from things that are not processes (continuants).  
> Processes(occurents) are dependent, via the has_participant relation,  
> on continants. They have parts, which are other processes that occupy  
> a piece of the space time of the whole process.
> 
> The underlying philosophy of representation is called "Realism",  
> which I can best describe as an attempt, when defining terms, to make  
> clear an "audit trail", if you will, to entities in the real world,  
> i.e. an understandable correspondence between what is being defined  
> in the ontology to things that exist or happen actually. If you are  
> interested in reading more, check out http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/
> 
> In some ways this avoids the question of what is better, since the  
> comparison is of what is represented to what is out in the world. But  
> of course this doesn't answer the full question in practice. In  
> practice you would first want to make clear what you want to be able  
> to say, and then determine what you will need to be able to ask and  
> have answered using your ontology.  Answers to such questions might  
> determine the formalism, or level of detail at which you represent  
> your processes.
> 
> As an example, if all you want to do is record something in an  
> Ontology and then read it out, then there is little constraint. If  
> you want it to be able to be merged with other people's work, then  
> there are some. If you want to be able to state general temporal  
> relations between activities and have consistency of your ontology  
> checked, then you can't even do this within the framework of the  
> current  web ontology languages.
> 
> Experience in the OBI project suggests that you work early on  
> outlining such "competency questions" for your ontology.
> 
> If you give some such competency questions, I could see if I have any  
> experience that might be relevant to your representation issues, or  
> perhaps point you at people that do.
> 
> -Alan
> 
>
Dick McCullough
mKE do enhance od "Real Intelligence" done;
knowledge := man do identify od existent done;
knowledge haspart proposition list;
http://mKRmKE.org/

Received on Wednesday, 28 May 2008 14:34:41 UTC