The C-ODO library currently contains 8 native ontologies, and imports or uses several others, either for design purposes (DOLCE, cDnS, etc.), or for extending their scope (owlodm, OMV, oQual, SKOS, NeOn networked ontology model). odAlignment.owl is the most generic module of the library, and it contains the alignment links to other ontologies that have been reused for internal design purposes (DOLCE, cDnS, Plans, InformationObjects, KCO). Since foundational ontologies like DOLCE contain many axioms and some names that are not very friendly, here we only include some axioms, and change names in order to facilitate intuition. C-ODO is an ontology for ontology design, to be used as a set of social requirements for NeOn methodologies and tools. The key notion is 'ontology project', which is assumed to be made up of knowledge-level ('epistemic') workflows, which on their turn contain 'argumentation structures' and 'design rationales' that motivate 'design solutions' taken from a 'choice space' generated by 'design patterns' over 'ontology elements'. Appropriate roles (e.g. 'knowledge product', 'knowledge creator') and tasks (e.g. functionalities like 'selection', 'importing', etc.) are used by project, workflow, and rationale schemas. Situation classes ('ontology project execution', 'epistemic workflow enactment', 'argumentation situation', 'design making', 'design solution') are introduced in order to reason on the actual occurrences of those schemas. Moreover, ontology objects and other information objects used during the ontology lifecycle, together with the design operations and the designer agents, are framed by those situations if they comply to the roles and tasks used by the schemas. Types of projects, workflows, argumentation, rationales, patterns, etc. are also introduced in C-ODO. The schema-situation approach is an architectural design pattern that is wholly axiomatized in the cDnS ontology (http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/cDnS.owl). It allows to talk of contexts (or methods, plans, etc.) in the same domain as the actual situations (executions, observations, etc.) that exemplify those contexts. More generally, the ontology design ontology uses the following patterns: - the DnS content pattern (http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/ExtendedDnS.owl) has been used throughout, and the following sub-patterns have been used: a) descriptions and concepts depend on existential axioms only when they involve 'descriptive' entities b) descriptions are constrained wrt a given situation class SC c) concepts are constrained wrt a given entity class EC d) SC are defined by requiring that some entity from EC is in their setting. - the collections pattern (http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/ExtendedDnS.owl), and the following sub-patterns have been used: a) collections have any entities as members b) collections are covered or characterized by concepts c) collections are unified by descriptions that use or define those concepts. -the plans pattern (http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/Plans.owl): a) plans use tasks, roles, and parameters b) plans have a main goal as a proper part c) plans are 'executed' within plan executions by agents playing roles in order to perform the tasks used by the plan d) plan executions start from certain situations ('preconditions') and result in certain situations ('postconditions'). Postconditions can be compliant or not to the expected goal.
ontology design ontology alignment module
A role played by entities during the execution of a plan, which do not play at the same time any performer or product roles.
A role played by entities within a post-condition of a (production) plan.
From the D&S ontology: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/ExtendedDnS.owl. A description is a social object which represents a conceptualization (e.g. a mental object or state), hence it is dependent on some agent and communicable. Descriptions can also be taken as reifications of 'cognitive' contexts or logical n-ary relations. Descriptions 'use' concepts, are 'expressed by' information objects and can be 'satisfied by' situations.
From the Information Objects Ontology: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/InformationObjects.owl. Information objects are social objects. They are realized by some entity. They are encoded within some system for information encoding. Consequently, they are dependent from an encoding as well as from a concrete realization. They can express a description (the ontological equivalent of a meaning/conceptualization). They can be about any entity. They can be interpreted by an agent. From a communication perspective, an information object can play the role of 'message'. From a semiotic perspective, it plays the role of 'expression'.
A collection whose members are 'unified', i.e. organized according to a certain schema that can be represented by a description. Typically, a configuration is the collection that emerges out of an composed entity: an industrial artifact, a plan, a discourse, etc. E.g. a physical book has a configuration provided by the part-whole schema that holds together its cover, pages, ink. That schema, based on the individual relations between the book and its parts, can be represented in a reified way by means of a (structural) description, which is said to 'unify' the book configuration.
From the Plan Ontology: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/Plans.owl. We are proposing here a restrictive notion of goal that relies upon its desirability by some agent, which does not necessarily play a role in the execution of the plan the goal is a part of. The minimal constraint for a goal is that it is a proper part of a plan. For example, a desire to start a relationship can become a goal if someone takes action (or lets someone else take it for her sake) to obtain it.
From the D&S ontology: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/ExtendedDnS.owl. A social object that is used by a description s, and whose function is classifying entities from a ground ontology in order to represent situations that can satisfy s. Concepts can be considered as the reification of unary predicates or relation domains, or roles in either conceptual modelling or description logics.
From the Plan Ontology: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/Plans.owl. A plan is a method for executing or performing a procedure or a stage of a procedure. A plan must use both at least one role played by an agent, and at least one task. Finally, a plan has a goal as proper part, and can also have regulations and other descriptions as proper parts.
The formal expression types included here are intended to cover all elements from formal theories, encoded in any representation language that has a formal semantics. For example, in the OWL 1.0 metamodel 'ontology element' types are subclasses of this class. The reason for this broad coverage is that ontology design can take into account the 'reengineering' of ontologies expressed in any logical language (besided those expressed informally, which are classified here under Lexicon, Thesaurus, or Folksonomy).
From the D&S ontology: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/ExtendedDnS.owl. Collections are social objects which depend both on member entities and on some concepts, hence they indirectly depend on descriptions. We can talk of collections of any kind of entities (events, objects, abstracts, etc.).
From the D&S ontology: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/ExtendedDnS.owl. A concept classifying only objects.
From the D&S ontology: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/ExtendedDnS.owl. A situation is a social object that appears in the domain of an ontology only because there is a description whose components can 'carve up' a view (setting) on that domain. A situation has to 'satisfy' a description, and it has to be 'setting for' at least one entity. In other words, it is the ontological counterpart (with due local differences or restrictions) of settings (situations from Situation Calculus, formal contexts, episodes, states of affairs, structures, configurations, cases, etc.). Two descriptions of a same situation are possible. The time and space (and possibly other values) of a situation are the time and space of the events and objects occurring in the setting.
QOOD is an acronym for 'Quality-Oriented Ontology Description', and has been defined in Gangemi et al. ESWC06. The reused ontology is at: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/EVAL/oqual.owl. QOODs are descriptions of what is needed in an ontology and in its use case to be appropriate to some criterion/task. QOODs are therefore useful for ontology design and specially for evaluation and selection. Design pattern schemas are considered here special cases of QOODs, and can also be used to implement unit tests for existing ontologies.
A role played by entities when are temporary states of an expected final product.
From the Information Objects ontology: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/InformationObjects.owl. The realization of an information objects in some physical entity.
An agent-driven role that is only played by rational agents that (actively) participate in some action at the time of role-playing.
From the D&S ontology: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/ExtendedDnS.owl. A concept classifying only actions.
A partial order relation that holds between descriptions. It represents the proper part relation between a description and another description featuring the same properties as the former, with at least an additional one. Descriptions can be expanded either by adding other descriptions as parts, or by refining concepts that are used by them. An 'intention' to expand must be present (unless purely formal theories are considered, but even in this case a criterion of relevance is usually active).