Ontology

A domain ontology (or domain-specific ontology) models a specific domain, or part of the world. It represents the particular meanings of terms as they apply to that domain. For example the word card has many different meanings. An ontology about the domain of poker would model the "playing card" meaning of the word, while an ontology about the domain of computer hardware would model the "punched card" and "video card" meanings.

An upper ontology (or foundation ontology) is a model of the common objects that are generally applicable across a wide range of domain ontologies. It contains a core glossary in whose terms objects in a set of domains can be described. There are several standardized upper ontologies available for use, including Dublin Core, GFO, OpenCyc/ResearchCyc, SUMO, and DOLCE. WordNet, while considered an upper ontology by some, is not strictly an ontology. However, it has been employed as a linguistic tool for learning domain ontologies.

The Gellish ontology is an example of a combination of an upper and a domain ontology.

Since domain ontologies represent concepts in very specific and often eclectic ways, they are often incompatible. As systems that rely on domain ontologies expand, they often need to merge domain ontologies into a more general representation. This presents a challenge to the ontology designer. Different ontologies in the same domain can also arise due to different perceptions of the domain based on cultural background, education, ideology, or because a different representation language was chosen.

At present, merging ontologies that are not developed from a common foundation ontology is a largely manual process and therefore time-consuming and expensive. Domain ontologies that use the same foundation ontology to provide a set of basic elements with which to specify the meanings of the domain ontology elements can be merged automatically. There are studies on generalized techniques for merging ontologies, but this area of research is still largely theoretical.

For us at Organic Design our ontology is a tree containing the whole organisational system, including current projects and workflow. The ontology is the first thing that needs to be defined by organisations working in accord with the manifesto. We are documenting the steps for defining an ontology in the set up a new organisational system procedure.

In a wiki organisation the top level of the ontology is formed from the record types in the wiki, or if there are many types they may be grouped and occupy the top two or even more levels.

Each of the record type nodes in the ontology link to the portal for that type which is usually the types Category page, but with the category member links grouped into specific portlets and queries and offering other associated resources and tools such as creation or search options.

Each of the record nodes also contains useful child nodes containing the five most recently used records of its type and useful specific links, for example within the Organisation node one may find "log activity" and "view worklog".

Merging ontologies

• A number of organisations merging to become a new organisation
• A number of individuals merging to form an organisation. The individuals use self organisation to define their respective ontologies then merge them

See also

• Organic Ontology
• Wikipedia:Ontology
• Web 3.0
• GNOME First Class Objects & Ubuntu Tracker
• CS Definition of Ontology at Eduwiki
• Ontology Development 101: A Guide to Creating Your First Ontology
• Organic ontology evolution as a basis for collaborative tagging in a polyscopic socio-semantic bookmarking system
• Semantic Web Services Framework (SWSF)
• Chimaera Chimaera is a software system that supports users in creating and maintaining distributed ontologies on the web. Two major functions it supports are merging multiple ontologies together and diagnosing individual or multiple ontologies.
• Stanford links to Ontology editing tools and frameworks