RE: Any reason for ontology reuse?

It is possible that many domain ontologies will emerge as quasi-standards
over time. This process would be similar to what has happened in other
communities. For example, in the human resources domain the HR-XML
Consortium (1) has been developing and refining HR-related XML schema (2)
for many years. Some other large company/organization might feel the
necessity and be willing to invest the resources into developing their own
different HR XML schema, but many companies would feel confident in using
the HR-XML "standard" that has been developed by the HR-XML Consortium. In
the Semantic Web world if, for example, the Association of International
Automobile Manufactures decided to invest in developing an OWL ontology for
the automotive domain, it would make sense for many to reuse that domain
ontology rather than developing one of their own or using one developed by
some less verifiable source. Some such "standards" are already emerging, but
it will take time for ontologies across many domains to emerge and they will
be developed only when the communities of interest feel it is in their
financial interest to do so. In the meanwhile the development and vetting by
the community of small ontologies that describe common concepts would
provide templates that others could confidently reuse. It would be useful if
some respected organization might establish formal vetting procedures and
collect these vetted ontologies and place them on a web site for all to
reuse. 


(1) http://www.hr-xml.org/hr-xml/wms/hr-xml-1-org/index.php?language=2 
(2)
http://www.hr-xml.org/hr-xml/wms/hr-xml-1-org/index.php?id={E00DA03B685A0DD1
8FB6A08AF0923DE0|139|2}

Received on Sunday, 5 December 2010 15:48:04 UTC