Enterprise Project: The Enterprise Ontology

    AVAILABILITY

    • The formal Ontolingua encoding of the Enterprise Ontology is held in the Library of Ontologies maintained by Stanford University's Knowledge Systems Lab (KSL). The code was produced using the Ontology Editor at KSL; read about our experiences using Ontolingua and KSL Services.

    • The natural language description of the Enterprise Ontology is published in (Uschold et. al. 1998). This article is available for download form the papers section immediately below.

    • For those interested in the historical development of the Enterprise Ontology, the old version (1.0) is still available via http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/enterprise/enterprise/ontology-code/.

    PAPERS

    • Mike Uschold, Martin King, Stuart Moralee and Yannis Zorgios (1998) The Enterprise Ontology The Knowledge Engineering Review , Vol. 13, Special Issue on Putting Ontologies to Use (eds. Mike Uschold and Austin Tate).
      Also available from AIAI as AIAI-TR-195: (postscript 1438k)

      Abstract
      This is a comprehensive description of the Enterprise Ontology, a collection of terms and definitions relevant to business enterprises. We state its intended purposes, describe how we went about building it, define all the terms and describe our experiences in converting these into formal definitions. We then describe how we used the Enterprise Ontology and give an evaluation which compares the actual uses with original purposes. We conclude by summarising what we have learned.

      The Enterprise Ontology was developed within the Enterprise Project, a collaborative effort to provide a framework for enterprise modelling. The Ontology was built to serve as a basis for this framework which includes methods and a computer tool set for enterprise modelling.

      We give an overview of the Enterprise Project, elaborate on the intended use of the Ontology, and give a brief overview of the process we went through to build it. The scope of the Enterprise Ontology covers those core concepts required for the project, which will appeal to a wider audience.

      We present natural language definitions for all the terms, starting with the foundational concepts (e.g. entity, relationship, actor). These are used to define the main body of terms, which are divided into the following subject areas: activities, organisation, strategy and marketing.

      We review some of the things learned during the formalisation process of converting the natural language definitions into Ontolingua. We identify and propose solutions for what may be general problems occurring in the development of a wide range of ontologies in other domains. We then characterise in general terms the sorts of issues that will be faced when converting an informal ontology into a formal one.

      Finally, we describe our experiences in using the Enterprise Ontology. We compare these with the intended uses, noting our successes and failures. We conclude with an overall evaluation and summary of what we have learned.

    • Mike Uschold & Michael Gruninger (1996) Ontologies: Principles, Methods and Applications Knowledge Engineering Review; Volume 11 Number 2, June 1996
      Also available from AIAI as AIAI-TR-191: (postscript 150k)

      Abstract
      This paper is intended to serve as a comprehensive introduction to the emerging field concerned with the design and use of ontologies. We observe that disparate backgrounds, languages, tools, and techniques are a major barrier to effective communication among people, organisations, and/or software systems. We show how the development and implementation of an explicit account of a shared understanding (i.e. an `ontology') in a given subject area, can improve such communication, which in turn, can give rise to greater reuse and sharing, inter-operability, and more reliable software.

      After motivating their need, we clarify just what ontologies are and what purposes they serve. We outline a methodology for developing and evaluating ontologies, first discussing informal techniques, concerning such issues as scoping, handling ambiguity, reaching agreement and producing definitions. We then consider the benefits of and describe, a more formal approach. We re-visit the scoping phase, and discuss the role of formal languages and techniques in the specification, implementation and evaluation of ontologies. Finally, we review the state of the art and practice in this emerging field, considering various case studies, software tools for ontology development, key research issues and future prospects.

    • Mike Uschold (1996) Converting an Informal Ontology into Ontolingua: Some Experiences
      (postscript 49k)       (also available from AIAI as AIAI-TR-192)

      A slightly abridged version of this paper appears
      in the Proceedings of the Workshop on Ontological Engineering
      to be held in conjunction with ECAI 96 in Budapest.

      Abstract
      We report our experiences of converting a carefully defined informal ontology expressed in natural language into the formal language: Ontolingua. The objectives of this paper are 1) to explore some of the nitty gritty details of formalising ontology definitions and 2) to serve as a basis for clarifying the relationship between this and other approaches to ontology construction (e.g. using competency questions), for the eventual aim of producing a comprehensive methodology.

      We first discuss concepts in the meta-ontology, including entities, classes, instances, relationships, roles, sets and states of affairs. With respect to roles, we define a special meta-class to classify objects whose existence necessarily depends on their being in a relationship with some other entity (e.g a customer). We describe a mechanism for classifying states of affairs which can be used to restrict what can be in certain relationships (e.g pre-condition).

      We then note some general issues that arise when producing formal definitions of the main terms; e.g. representing terms from a difference perspective, and identifying when and how new terms must be introduced. The need for new terms arises not only to fill gaps, but also to make explicit facts and logical dependencies that were only implied by the text definitions.

    • Mike Uschold (1996) Building Ontologies: Towards a Unified Methodology
      (postscript 57k)       (also available from AIAI as AIAI-TR-197)

      Presented at Expert Systems '96 Conference in Cambridge, UK

      Abstract
      The use and importance of ontologies is becoming more widespread, however building ontologies is largely a black art. The aim of this paper is to identify and characterise what we currently know and to move towards the longer term goal of developing a comprehensive unified methodology.

      We first identify dimensions for characterising ontologies, to be used as a basis for noting which techniques and guidelines for building ontologies apply in different circumstances. We then give an overview of the current state of the art, noting that most work addresses just a small part of the life cycle. The very few more complete methods are limited to case studies involving single ontologies and they are hard to compare. In the main part of this paper, we examine two such methods and give a framework for comparing and unifying them. We emphasise that different approaches are required for difference circumstances, and give some guidelines for when to use which techniques. We conclude by considering how to further advance our understanding of building ontologies.

    • M. Uschold, M. King, S. Moralee and Y. Zorgios (1995) The Enterprise Ontology
      (postscript 100k)

      Abstract
      This document presents the Enterprise Ontology, a collection of terms and definitions relevant to business enterprises. It was developed as part of the Enterprise Project, a collaborative effort to provide a framework for enterprise modelling. The Enterprise Ontology will serve as a basis for this framework which includes methods and a computer toolset for enterprise modelling.

      We give an overview of the Enterprise Project, elaborate on the intended use of the Ontology, and discuss the process we went through to build it. The scope of the Enterprise Ontology is limited to those core concepts required for the project, however it is expected that it will appeal to a wider audience. It should not be considered static; during the course of the project, the Enterprise Ontology will be further refined and extended.

    • Mike Uschold & Martin King (1995) Towards a Methodology for Building Ontologies
      (postscript 68k)       (also available from AIAI as AIAI-TR-183)

      Presented at Workshop on Basic Ontological Issues in Knowledge Sharing
      Held in conjunction with IJCAI-95 in Montreal.

      Abstract
      We outline some requirements for a comprehensive methodology for building ontologies, and review some important work that has been done in the area which could contribute to this goal. We describe our own experiences in constructing a significant ontology, emphasising the ontology capture phase.

      We first consider the very general issue of categorisation in modelling, and relate it to the process of ontology capture. We then describe the procedure that we used to identify the terms and produce definitions. We describe a successful way to handle ambiguous terms, which can be an enormous obstacle to reaching a shared understanding. Other important findings include: it may not be necessary to identify competency questions before building the ontology; the meta-ontology can be chosen after detailed text definitions are produced; defining terms which are 'cognitively basic' first can lead to less re-work.

    Notes from Mike Uschold, Senior Ontology Consultant at at Semantic Arts on 3rd May 2017...

    Work on the Enterprise Ontology was a group effort that I was the main editor for. By my recollection, the ontology never did make it into Protege. Instead, it was developed on the Ontolingua sytsem, which was developed by Tom Gruber and was one of the first ever Web applications.

    May I suggest another resource to consider called 'gist'. It is an upper ontology for building enterprise ontologies, hence is very similar to the Enterprise Ontology. However it is in OWL, and benefits from the 10+ years of experiences at Semantic Arts in building enterprise ontologies for real companies. Is it freely available from the link below:

    • gist: Upper enterprise ontology

    Here is a talk with an example of one of the enterprise ontologies we built using it:

    • Mike Uschold: In the Trenches with Enterprise Ontology - YouTube Video [55:11]

    (Last updated 20th April 2000)
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