Ontology, or the nature of being, has been a focal area of study in the philosophical disciplines for a long time. Interpreted simply, the term ontology refers to the question “what kinds of things exist?” to a philosopher, while a computer scientist grapples with the question “what kinds of things should we capture and represent?” Together, research on the two questions yield a broad framework for the analysis of a discourse universe, its representation in some abstract form and the development of organizations and systems within the universe. The philosophical perspective on ontology provides a description of the essential properties and relations of all beings in the universe, while this notion has been expanded as well as specialized in the fields of computer science and artificial intelligence. The AI/CS communities now use this notion to refer to not one but multiple ontologies. In the AI/CS perspective, an ontology refers to the specification of knowledge about entities, and their relationships and interactions in a bounded universe of discourse only. As a result, a number of bounded-universe ontologies have been created over the last decade. These include the Chemicals ontology in the chemistry area, the TOVE and Enterprise ontologies for enterprise modeling, the REA ontology in the accounting area, organizational knowledge ontology in the knowledge management area, an ontology of air campaign planning in the defense area, and the GALEN ontology in the medical informatics area.
It is now being recognized that ontological principles can be fruitfully applied to and developed further in various fields within the broader information systems area. This development has lead to ontology-driven information systems (ODIS), which is a concept that can open up new ways of thinking about ontologies and the Information Systems ― both structurally and temporally.
The primary objective of ONTOLOGIES: A Handbook of Principles, Concepts and Applications in Information Systems is to mobilize a collective awareness in the research community to the leading and emerging developments in ODIS, and consequently, highlight the enormous potential of ODIS research to both fundamentally transform and create innovative solutions to several problems in various domains. This book is a compilation of 32 leading-edge chapter contributions from some of the top researchers in the community working in various fundamental and applied disciplines related to ODIS. These chapters are organized into four broad themes: Foundations of ODIS, Ontological Engineering, ODIS Architectures, and ODIS Applications. These four themes together describe the state-of-the-art in ODIS and give a complete perspective on the problems, solutions and open research questions in this field. The foundations of ODIS are addressed in Chapters 1-6. The principles and techniques of ontological engineering in the context of ODIS are covered in Chapters 7-14. A collection of ODIS architectures in a variety of contexts is presented in Chapters 15-24, and lastly, a set of important and emerging ODIS applications is presented in Chapters 25-32.
We expect this book to trigger innovative thought processes that will open up significant new domains in ODIS research. Numerous open research questions, challenges and opportunities can be found throughout this book and we hope this will stimulate significantresearch over the years.
