© 2004 Vrije Universiteit 1

Ontologies improve the design and Ontologies improve the design and interoperability of the networked interoperability of the networked

enterpriseenterprise

Jaap Gordijn (gordijn@cs.vu.nl)

Yao-Hua Tan (ytan@feweb.vu.nl)

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

© 2004 Vrije Universiteit 2

What is an Ontology?• In philosophy: theory of what exists in the world

(Aristotle, scholastics, Quine)

• In IT: consensual & formal description of shared consensual & formal description of shared concepts in a domainconcepts in a domain

• Aid to human communication and shared understanding, by specifying meaning

• Machine-processable (e.g., agents use ontologies in communication)

• Ontology = key technology in semantic information processing

• Applications: knowledge management, electronic business, multi-agent systems, industrial engineering, semantic world wide web

Courtesy slide: Hans Akkermans

Source: Financial Times, e-procurement, Oct. 2000

© 2004 Vrije Universiteit 4

Multiple ontologies for multiple purposes

e3-valueontology

e3-service ontology

ebXML, DAML-S

ontologies

Configuration Ontology

• What do you want to do with your ontology?

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Example 1: Analysis of Bundles in the Electricity Domain

Step 2 Find service elements

Step 3 Configure bundles

Step 4 Analyse profitability

Step 1 Design initial value proposition

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Example 2: Analysis of the Letter of Credit Procedure

• Shared understandig of service (LoC)

• Analysis: Illegal claimant

Goals: Understanding Fraud analysis

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Ontologies are gonna get you• Ontologies are a new mechanism for theory formation in

Information Science: conceptualize business issues in a formal way

• They can be computer-implemented, and so give rigorous foundations to Information Systems

• They can thus be empirically tested and validated (the usual conceptual-level business talk you cannot)

• At the same time they show that statistics is not the only way for empirical research

• And their results are practically useful in business and industry (see our case studies)