Towards principled core ontologies
André X. C. N. Valente, Joost Breuker, Mark A. Musen, Brian R. Gaines · 1996
An important issue in the newborn discipline of ontological engineering is the construction of libraries of ontologies which are designed for maximum reusability. Van Heijst et. al. suggested that a central part of ontology libraries is the definition of what they called a core ontology, containing elements that are as generic and method-independent as possible. However, their specification of how these core ontologies should be constructed is highly pragmatical, and leaves many problems unresolved. In this article we propose and discuss a number of specific principles for the construction of core ontologies. We demonstrate the advantages of these principles using as an example a core ontology we have built for the domain of law. Several conclusions about the construction of ontology libraries based on core ontologies are drawn. 1 Introduction An important issue in the newborn discipline of ontological engineering is the construction of libraries of ontologies which are desig...