This is the Ontology for the Enterprise Project .Conceptually, the Enterprise Ontology it is divided into a number of main sections -- these are summarised below.
ACTIVITIES and PROCESSES:
The central term is Activity. This is intended to capture the notion of anything that involves doing, in particular including action. The concept of Activity is closely linked with the idea of the Doer, which may be a Person, Organisational-Unit or Machine. These terms are defined in the Organisation section and may collectively be referred to as Potential-Actor s. The ability to be the Doer of an Activity is denoted by Capability (or Skill if the Doer is a Person). Actors may have other Roles in respect of an Activity such as Activity-Owner.
Also closely related to Activity is Resource, which is something used or consumed in an Activity. An Activity can also have outputs or Effects. An Activity is linked to a Time-Interval, which is defined in the Time section. An Activity may be large and complex and take a long time. This may be represented as composition of many Sub-Activity s.
An Activity can obviously have happened in the past and may be happening in the present. The term can also be used to refer to a hypothetical future Activity. However, there is a need to refer explicitly to specifications or plans for Activities. This is provided by the term Activity-Spec. An Activity-Spec specifies at some level of detail one or more possible Activities. If the Activity-Spec has an Intended-Purpose, it is called a Plan. The concept of repeatability of an Activity or Plan is captured in the term Process-Specification.
Control of doing of Activities is important to enterprises. This is provided by the Relationship Hold-Authority denoting that an Actor has the right to perform the Activities as specified in an Activity-Spec.
ORGANISATION:
Central to the Organisation section are concepts of Legal-Entity and ORGANISATIONAL UNIT (abbreviated as OU). Both of these refer to things which have a `gestalt' whether they are individual or composite. They differ in that a Legal-Entity is recognised as having rights and responsibilities in the world at large and by legal jurisdictions in particular, whereas Organisational-Unit need only have full recognition within an organisation.
Legal-Entity includes Person and Corporation. Larger Legal-Entities may wholly own other smaller Legal-Entities. An Organisational-Unit may be large and complex, even transcending Legal-Entities. Large OUs will normally be seen as being made up from smaller ones. The smallest may correspond to a single Person, in fact a particular Person could be seen as corresponding with more than one small OU.
A Machine is a non-human, non- Legal-Entity that may play certain Roles otherwise played by a Person or Ou (e.g. perform an Activity).
The Ownership of rights and responsibilities may only, from the legal point of view, lie with a Legal-Entity. Within an organisation, rights and responsibilities for Resources may be allocated to OUs. Therefore Ownership is defined to include this, with Legal-Ownership and Non-Legal-Ownership defined to enable the distinction where needed. OUs may be responsible for Activities.
Within an organisation the management structure is represented by Management Links. The term Manage represents assigning Purposes to OUs. An Organisational Structure will be defined as a pattern of Management Links between OUs. This can include multiple Management Links into any one OU with constraints on the different type of Purposes assigned through each link.
STRATEGY:
The central concept of the Strategy section is Purpose. Purpose captures the idea either of something which a PLAN can HELP ACHIEVE or that an ORGANISATION UNIT can be responsible for. In fact it includes any kind of PURPOSE, whether on a level of organisation and time scale which will normally be called strategic, or detailed and short term.
Like an OU, a Purpose can be composed or decomposed. That is, one statement of Purpose may relate to something which can also be seen to Help-Achieve some grander Purpose. By this means, a spectrum of widely used terms like Vision, Mission, Goal, and Objective can be represented without there being shared agreement on precisely how these terms are used.
Strategy is defined as a Plan to Achieve a high-level Purpose. Based on the concept of PLAN from the Activity section, the concepts key to Strategic Planning can be represented with the terms Decision, Assumption, Risk, and various types of Factor.
MARKETING:
The central concept of the Marketing section is Sale. A Sale is an agreement between two Legal-Entities for the exchange of a Product for a Sale-Price. Normally the Product is a good or service and the Sale-Price is monetary, however other possibilities are included. The Legal-Entities play the (usually distinct) Roles of Vendor and Customer. A Sale can have been agreed in the past, and a future Potential-Sale can be envisaged, whether or not the actual Product can be identified, or even exists.
The Market is all Sales and Potential Sales within a scope of interest. The Market may include Sales by Competitors. The Market may be decomposed into Market Segments in many ways in many levels of detail. This can be done by any properties of the Product, Vendor, Customer, Sale-Price or of anything else associated with a Sale. These properties are Segmentation-Variables.
Analysis of a Market may involve understanding of Features of Products, Needs of Customers, and Images of Brands, Products, or Vendors. Promotions are Activities whose Purposes relate to the Image in a Market.
* We believe that we accurately represented the intended meaning of the terms described in the specification, though many details and names differ.
* Neither `ENTITY' nor `RELATIONSHIP' in the specification were defined explicitly in the code. OL provided adequate primitives to cover what was required, so we eventually decided there was little to be gained by formally defining them. As it happened, there were technical reasons making it difficult to conveniently do so.
--- 'ENTITY' in the specification is equivalent to the union of the Frame-Ontology classes: Set and Thing.
--- `RELATIONSHIP' in the specification was deliberately ambiguous, reflecting common usage of the term in natural language. In particular, it refered both to the set of tuples constituting a relation and a single tuple. If we restrict usage to refer to the relation itself, then `RELATIONSHIP' is equivalent to a subclass of Relation@Frame-Ontology which excludes unary-relations.
--- `ATTRIBUTE' in the specification is roughly equivalent to a Function in OL; however mainly what was said to be an ATTRIBUTE in the specification is modelled in OL as a slot on some class whose slot-cardinality is set to 1.
There is a subtle distinction here. A slot with slot-cardinality set to 1
may not explicitly be a Function in OL; rather it
corresponds
to what has the defining property
of a function. In particular, it corresponds
to a sub-relation (i.e. a subset of tuples) of the
[independently defined] Binary-Relation used in the slot.
--- A `ROLE' in the specification is not explicitly represented, it corresponds to [the semantics of] an argument in a relation.
Many Roles are not particularly interesting and thus are neither referred to nor represented except implicitly as arguments in relations. However the 'used/consumed' role in the Can-Use-Resource relation is EXTREMELY important and is usually referred to as a Resource.
In this ontology, important Roles such as this give rise to explicitly defined Role-Classe s
In the Enterprise Ontology, there are a considerable number of such Role-Classes; in addition to Resource, these include:
* DOER: performer of an ACTIVITY
* PURPOSE: a STATE OF AFFAIRS that is either
1) the Intended-Purpose of some Plan, or
2) in a Hold-Purpose relationship with some Actor
This is an interesting example where PURPOSE is logically the union of two ROLE-CLASSES.
* PURPOSE-HOLDER: The ACTOR in the Hold-Purpose relation
to name just a few.
--- ACTORS: The formal encoding of ACTOR is exactly in line with how it is defined in the natural language version of this ontology. In particular, it is a Role-Class defined to include any EO-Entity that actually plays some Actor Role in some Relation. Recall that an Actor Role is a special kind of role whereby its playing entails some notion of doing or cognition. Actor is a subclass of Qua-Entity, the class of all EO-Entities defined in terms of Roles. It's subclasses include such things as Actual-Doer, Purpose-Holder. Subclasses of Qua-Entity that are not Actors include Resource and Assumption.
To ensure that an Actor is a Machine, Person, or Organisational-Unit, we introduce the class 'Potential-Actor' which has these as its major subclasses. Arguments in relations that are type restricted to Actor in the natural language version are restricted to Potential-Actor in this formal version.
* We explicitly defined many things that did not directly appear in the specification, but rather were implicit in the definitions of other terms. For example, where something is defined as `a Role in a Relationship between an X and a Y whereby ...' the Relationship is explicitly defined, along with, in some cases, an explicit Role-Class. E.g. see definitions for Assumed and Assumption.
* We defined additional things that make obvious connections explicit, e.g. we defined a Produced-By relationship which models the output of an activity. This allows us to formally define Strategic-Planning in terms of Strategy. Another example is Strategic-Purpose which enabled other connections to be explicit.
* We discoved a small number of important gaps in the specification, chief among which was the lack of an Activity-Spec as opposed to an Activity.
* We do not regard any of these choices as sacred, and we may well have erred on the side of too much detail. But at least we resisted the temptation to define Risk as:
(<which is a fairly direct translation of the text into Highest Order Logic.
=> (Risk ?risk) (exists (?purpose ?actor)
(and (State-of-affairs ?purpose)
(Potential-Actor ?actor)
(Intended-Purpose ?actor ?purpose)
(Believe ?actor
(Possible (Hinder ?risk ?purpose))))) )
add opening summary for meta-ontology as per other main areas.
** Add new class: When-Hold-Spec which is union of Pre-Condition-When-Hold and Effect-When-Hold
** Add new class: PLANNING-CONSTRAINT which has two slots -- of types: When-Hold-Spec and State-Of-Affairs
It's two major sub-classes are Pre-Condition and Effect (which inherit both slots -- but whose slot-value-types are differently restricted i.e. Precondition-When-Hold and Effect-When-Hold)
** Change the slot-value-type restriction of Actual-Pre-Condition[and Effect] and Specified-Pre-Condition[and Effect] from State-Of-Affairs to the new classes: Pre-Condition and Effect (where specified as template-slots in the definition of Activity and Activity-Spec).
Change definition of Specified-[Actual-]Pre-Condition[Effect] to binary relations whose second argument is typed be Pre-Condition and Effect instead of State-Of-Affairs
** I got rid of the time stuff that I had defined and just included the ontology JAT-GENERIC which is publicly available.
** JAT-GENERIC defines Time-Range, which is identical to what we were calling Time-Interval
** I Removed definitions of Specified-[Actual-]T-Begin and Specified-[Actual-]T-End;
It was replaced by a single slot called Specified-[Actual-]-Activity-Interval which is of type: Time-Range. The existing slots of Time-Range give the start and end times which correspond to what T-Begin and T-End were.
A new relationship was added called Execution-Of-Activity-Spec connect the Activity-Spec with the Actual Activity that corresonds to its execution.
Jat-Generic
Frame-Ontology
Kif-Relations
Kif-Sets
Kif-Lists
Kif-Numbers
Kif-Extensions
Kif-Sets
Kif-Lists ...
Kif-Numbers
Kif-Relations ...
Kif-Meta
Kif-Sets
Kif-Lists ...
No ontologies include Enterprise-V0.1.
No ontologies use Enterprise-V0.1.
Eo-Entity
Activity-Or-Spec
Activity
Delegate
Event
Manage
Planning
Strategic-Planning
Resource-Allocation
Activity-Spec
Plan
Process-Spec
Strategy
Sub-Plan
Strategic-Action
Decision
Employment-Contract
For-Sale
Proposed-Sale-Offer
Good-Service-Or-Money
Has-Monetary-Value
Asset
Legal-Entity
Corporation
Partnership
Person
Partner
Shareholder
Vendor
Misc-Spec-Detail
Activity-State
When-Hold-Spec
Effect-When-Hold
Pre-Condition-When-Hold
Ownership
Legal-Ownership
Non-Legal-Ownership
Activity-Ownership
Planning-Constraint
Effect
Pre-Condition
Potential-Actor
Actor
Activity-Owner
Actual-Doer
Owner
Partner
Purpose-Holder
Shareholder
Specified-Doer
Stakeholder
Vendor
Machine
Organisational-Unit
Person ...
Potential-Sale
Qua-Entity
Actor ...
Assumption
Critical-Assumption
Non-Critical-Assumption
Plan ...
Product
Purpose
Critical-Success-Factor
Goal
Mission
Objective
Strategic-Purpose
Vision
Resource
Sub-Plan ...
Sale
Share
Share-Type
Shareholding
Role-Class
State-Of-Affairs
Assumption ...
Influence-Factor
Critical-Influence-Factor
Non-Critical-Influence-Factor
Purpose ...
Activity-Status Actual-Activity-Interval Actual-Effect Actual-Output Actual-Pre-Condition Actually-Execute Assumed Can-Use-Resource Chosen-Activity Corporation-Of Decision-Taker Employee Employer Execution-Of-Activity-Spec Have-Capability Have-Skill Help-Achieve Hold-Authority Hold-Purpose Holds-Stake-In In-Scope-Of-Interest Intended-Purpose Known-True Managed-By Manages Number-Held Owned-Entity Owned-Rights Owning-Actor Parent-Legal-Entity Partner-Of Perceived-Risk Plan-Assumption Planning-Assumption Resource-Substitute Responsibilities-Of-Owner Restricted-List-Of-Relsents Restricted-Relsent Share-Type-Of Shareholder-Of Specified-Activity-Interval Specified-Effect Specified-Output Specified-Potential-Customer Specified-Pre-Condition Specified-To-Execute State-Description Sub-Activity Sub-Activity-Spec Sub-Plan-Of Used-Or-Associated-With When-Hold Works-For-Ou
Actual-Customer Asking-Price For-Sale-Vendor Product-For-Sale Product-Sold Sale-Price Sale-Vendor
After-T-Begin After-T-End Always Before-T-Begin Before-T-End During-Whole-Interval Future Ordinary Past Present
Activity Activity-Or-Spec Activity-Owner Activity-Ownership Activity-Spec Activity-State Actor Actual-Doer Asset Assumption Corporation Critical-Assumption Critical-Influence-Factor Critical-Success-Factor Decision Delegate Effect Effect-When-Hold Employment-Contract Eo-Entity Event For-Sale Goal Good-Service-Or-Money Has-Monetary-Value Influence-Factor Legal-Entity Legal-Ownership Machine Manage Misc-Spec-Detail Mission Non-Critical-Assumption Non-Critical-Influence-Factor Non-Legal-Ownership Objective Organisational-Unit Owner Ownership Partner Partnership Person Plan Planning Planning-Constraint Potential-Actor Potential-Sale Pre-Condition Pre-Condition-When-Hold Process-Spec Product Proposed-Sale-Offer Purpose Purpose-Holder Qua-Entity Resource Resource-Allocation Role-Class Sale Share Share-Type Shareholder Shareholding Specified-Doer Stakeholder State-Of-Affairs Strategic-Action Strategic-Planning Strategic-Purpose Strategy Sub-Plan Vendor Vision When-Hold-Spec
The following constants were used from included ontologies:
All constants that were mentioned were defined.