© 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 ([email protected])
Yao-Hua Tan ([email protected])
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
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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)
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