pdf 820Kb - INSEAD CALT

Evaluation report of the use of Onto-Logging
platform in the user site
Deliverable ID: D8b
Page : 57 of 110
Version: 1.0
Date: 27 january 2004
Status: Final
Confid.: Public
Therefore, the original ontology was too general, especially in some concepts, which are key
for some of the proposed scenarios (especially Tendering). On the contrary, it was too
specific in some of its branches, so a more general approach ha s been used in the new
ontology.
The usage of the domain ontology (queries, submitted documents) helps the ontology
engineer to decide what concepts are missing, which concepts have not been used
appropriately and which ones cause problems. The queries of the users can also help to
identify new relationships between concepts.
In addition to the suggestions from the other users some limitations of the domain ontology
were identified when the ontology engineer used the tool as a normal user (e.g. the missing
concepts or relationships can be detected when entering or querying data). Therefore, a first
step to take before refining the ontology is review users’ work and suggestions, and also
experiment the DUI as a normal user, trying to reproduce the more frequent use cases. Once
compiled all this notes, the ontology engineer begins to make the corresponding changes.
5.2.2 The reengineering of the Ontology
As the level of quality of the first version of the Ontology (used for the first stage of the
evaluation) was found not adequate (not complete, confusing, noisy, etc.), a process of major
redesign was initiated.
5.2.2.1 Description of the ontology re-reengineering process
This section describes the process accomplished to update the original version of Indra’s
domain ont ology, according to the users’ comments, and to the work made for the domain
modellers in order to solve the detected problems and to adapt the ontology to the proposed
use scenarios.
A detailed description of the process of refining and migrating the domain ontology (by the
ontology engineer of Indra) is presented bellow.
Step 1 - ‘In paper’ redesign
The first step carried out when redesigning the ontology was to analyse the original ontology
to detect which ‘branches’ of the ontology store homogeneous and appropriated data and
which ones not. This allows the managers to distinguish those concepts that are well defined
from those one that are confused and cause misunderstandings or problems.
It is also important that the manager use the DUI as other users, because the best way of
viewing what the user may need is being in the user’s place. Therefore, it is important to take
into account the use scenarios, in order to detect which may be the most frequent queries that