New Generation Computing, 22(2004)193-220
Ohmsha, Ltd. and Springer-Verlag
Received 18 August 2003
This article deals with advanced topics of ontological engineering
to convince readers ontology is more than a rule base of terminological problems
and is worth to consider a promising methodology in the next generation knowledge
processing research. Needless to say, ontology in AI is tightly connected to
ontology in philosophy. The first topic here is on philosophical issues which
are very important to properly understand what an ontology is. After defining
class, instance and is-a relation, we point out some typical inappropriate
uses of is-a relation in existing ontologies and analyze the reasons
why. Other topics are basic ontological distinction, part-of relation, and so
on. As an advanced example of ontology, an ontology of representation is extensively
discussed. To conclude this tutorial, a success story of ontological engineering
is presented. It is concerned with a new kind of application of ontology, that
is, knowledge systematization. An ontology-based framework for functional knowledge
sharing has been deployed into a company for two years and has been a great
success. Finally, future of ontological engineering is discussed followed by
concluding remarks.
1. Fundamental Issues
1.1 Background
1.2 Class Instance and is-a Relation
1.3 Ontological Distinction
1.4 Role Attribute
1.5 Instance vs. Occurrence
1.6 Kinds of a Part-of Relation
1.7 Data, Information and Knowledge
2. Ontology of Representation
2.1 Two Principles
2.2 A Conceptual Model of Representation
2.3 An Ontology of Representation
3. Guidelines of Ontology Building
4. A Success Story of Ontology Research
4.1 Systematization of Functional Knowledge
4.2 Deployment into the Production Division of an Industry
5. Future of Ontological Engineering
6. Concluding Remarks
Keywords:Bioinformatics, Grid, Adaptive Scheduling,
Adaptive Execution..