Innovation and Ontologies

202 Multimethodological Background
Once an ontology developed by the Cyc methodology is comprehensive enough, new common
sense knowledge can be acquired either by using natural language or by delegation to machine
learning tools (Gómez-Pérez, Fernández-López & Corcho, 2002; Guha & Lenat, 1990; Lenat &
Guha, 1990). Validation of the ontology takes place by getting persons with common sense
knowledge to use the system and feedback thereon (Lenat et al., 1990).
1.1.1.2 Methods of Enterprise Ontology and TOVE
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Uschold, King, Grueninger and Fox documented their experiences of the universityindustry
cooperation of the Enterprise Ontology and TOVE. The resulting
guidelines describe the activities necessary for establishment of a formal ontology as
an intelligent way of enterprise modeling.
In 1996, Uschold, King and their colleagues came up with methodical outlines elaborated during
development of the Enterprise Ontology (Uschold, 1996; Uschold & Grueninger, 1996; Uschold et
al., 1998). They suggested the following procedure:
Purpose & Scope
Scope
Building
Guidelines for Ontology Building
• Identification and characterization of intended users (e.g. managers, programmers)
• Identification of the purpose(s)
• Production of user requirements document
• Motivating (detailed) scenarios
• Informal competency questions that the ontology should be able to answer
• Brainstorming session to collect all potentially relevant terms and phrases
• Grouping of the collected terms
Capture (by a middle out approach234): Identification of key concepts and
relationships; production of precise unambiguous text definitions for concepts and
relationships; identification of terms to refer to concepts and relationships; and
agreement on all above
Coding: Commitment to basic terms (meta-ontology), selection of formal
representation language, and writing of code
Integration: Decision on how and how much existing ontologies are integrated
Evaluation Review process includes endusers as usability judges
Documentation Establishment of guidelines for documentation
table 52 Guidelines for ontology building (based on Uschold & Grueninger, 1996; Uschold, 1996)
234 Middle out combines the top down and the bottom up approach, for details cf. paragraph 2.2.2.2.