Ontology

wikipedia says: An ontology is a data model that represents a domain and is used to reason about the objects in that domain and the relations between them. Ontologies generally describe:


 * Individuals:the basic or "ground level" objects.
 * Classes: sets, collections, or types of objects.
 * Attributes: properties, features, characteristics, or parameters that objects can have and share.
 * Relations: ways that objects can be related to one another.

Other definitions
... where (2) is a subset of (1).
 * 1) Philosophy: a scaffold of concepts we can talk and agree about
 * 2) Semantic Web people: formulae in Description logic (decidable!)
 * Source: talk with Michael Kohlhase, 20:46, 16 January 2007 (CET)

Ontology types

 * Document ontology
 * Domain ontology
 * System ontology
 * Upper ontology

How do both ontology types relate?
 * Document ontologies specify the vocabular which is used to model domain ontologies. (???)

Ontology Design Methods
In the first step convert a XML schema via a XSLT into a argoUML XML file and then convert this argoUML XML file -- again via a XSLT -- into OWL-DL file. So the final OWL-DL file would serve as a basis to setup a system ontology.--Nmueller 12:45, 23 November 2006 (CET)