Abstract
Ontologies are often perceived as not useful for practical problems. This chapter shows that this is not true. We present an ontological framework to support development of business information systems with a focus on the conceptual data modeling phase. We introduce four-dimensional analysis, with spatio-temporal extents, and apply this approach to several examples from practical experience. We notice that four-dimensional analysis results in sets with unchanging membership, and show how some alternative set theoretic approaches have application in practice. We look more closely at properties, and in particular physical quantities. Finally, we look at how this affects the development of data models and give a case study of the development of Shell’s Downstream Data Model.
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West, M. (2009). Ontology Meets Business - Applying Ontology to the Development of Business Information Systems. In: Tolk, A., Jain, L.C. (eds) Complex Systems in Knowledge-based Environments: Theory, Models and Applications. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 168. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88075-2_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88075-2_9
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