Helena Sofia Pinto

Ontologies: How can They be Built?

Ontologies are an important component in many areas, such as knowledge management and organization, electronic commerce and information retrieval and extraction. Several methodologies for ontology building have been proposed. In this article, we provide an overview of ontology building. We start by characterizing the ontology building process and its life cycle. We present the most representative methodologies for building ontologies from scratch, and the proposed techniques, guidelines and methods to help in the construction task. We analyze and compare these methodologies. We describe current research issues in ontology reuse. Finally, we discuss the current trends in ontology building and its future challenges, namely, the new issues for building ontologies for the Semantic Web.

A methodology for ontology integration

Although ontology reuse is an important research issue only one of its subprocesses (merge) is fairly well understood. The time has come to change the current state of affairs with the other reuse subprocess: integration. In this paper we describe the activities that compose this process and describe a methodology to perform the ontology integration process..

Reference Ontology and (ONTO)2 Agent: The Ontology Yellow Pages

Abstract. Knowledge reuse by means of ontologies faces three important problems at present: (1) there are no standardized identifying features that characterize ontologies from the user point of view; (2) there are no web sites using the same logical organization, presenting relevant information about ontologies; and (3) the search for appropriate ontologies is hard, time-consuming and usually fruitless. To solve the above problems, we present: (1) a living set of features that allow us to characterize ontologies from the user point of view and have the same logical organization; (2) a living domain ontology about ontologies (called Reference Ontology) that gathers, describes and has links to existing ontologies; and (3) (ONTO)2 Agent, the ontology-based WWW broker about ontologies that uses Reference Ontology as a source of its knowledge and retrieves descriptions of ontologies that satisfy a given set of constraints.

Adding a Human Perspective to Enterprise Architectures

Enterprise modeling, commonly supported by enterprise architecture frameworks, has proved to be an effective communication tool that facilitates the development of applications aligned with the business. These modeling frameworks are concerned with organizations design rather than its actual implementation. We argue that modeling the actual implementation of organizations can be a valuable communication tool not only for systems development but also for organizational analysts, managers and workers. However, this kind of usage requires the inclusion of a human perspective in current enterprise architectures. In this paper, we propose to extend the CEO enterprise architecture with a human view based on a conceptual model consistent with contemporary paradigms of organizational science. The proposal is illustrated with examples drawn from a case study.

How to Find Suitable Ontologies Using an Ontology-based WWW Broker

Knowledge reuse by means of ontologies now faces three important problems: (1) there are no standardized identifying features that characterize ontologies from the user point of view; (2) there are no web sites using the same logical organization, presenting relevant information about ontologies; and (3) the search for appropriate ontologies is hard, time-consuming and usually fruitless. To solve the above problems, we present: (1) a living set of features that allow us to characterize ontologies from the user point of view and have the same logical organization; (2) a living domain ontology about ontologies (called Reference Ontology) that gathers, describes and has links to existing ontologies; and (3) Reference Ontology as a source of its knowledge and retrieves descriptions of ontologies that satisfy a given set of constraints. (ONTO)2 Agent is available at http://delicias.dia.fi.upm.es/REFERENCE ONTOLOGY/

Defining an architectural view for human resources

The development of modelling frameworks enabling the analysis and (re)design of HR behaviours is essential for the proper integration of Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) within organisations. Enterprise Modelling (EM), is widely used to model organisational strategy, activities and resources. However, current EM frameworks disregard the complexity, adaptiveness, and emergence that characterise organisations and their human resources. This paper describes an architectural view to model the activity of human resources in organisations that takes into account all those characteristics. It does so by acknowledging: (1) multiple behavioural concerns, (2) the situational nature of the activity of people in organisations, and (3) human adaptive and emergent behaviours. The paper also suggests an approach for interrelating the proposed architecture with current EM frameworks, and illustrates this with examples from a case study.