Formal ontology meets industry

in ontology is quite abstract and often based on toy-examples to the point that the gap between the work of theoreticians and the needs of real applications is too wide to be crossed: researchers do not have enough domain expertise to show how to implement a formal system to make it suitable for specific problems, while domain practitioners do not seem to have a clear understanding of the subtleties of ontology to push forward innovative uses or original solutions based on this approach. We believe this gap is today one of the major reasons for not having a clear assessment of the import that Formal Ontology brings in traditional application domains like rationalization of production, financial accounting (say, in production and services), and human resource management. The first effort in applying ontology, should be toward a good understanding of the domain at stake, to which a sufficiently deep description must follow. As of today, a major challenge is to isolate and define a stable...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: AO
• Authors: Stefano Borgo, Matteo Cristani, Roberta Cuel
• Keywords: AO 2006, Formal Ontology, Ontologies, Ontology