Ontology – Definition

What is an ontology?

Systematic explanation of Existence, Formal, explicit

specification of a shared conceptualization

Ontology defines basic terms and relations comprising the

vocabulary of a topic area as well as the rules for combining
terms and relations to define extensions to the vocabulary

Explicit specification of a conceptualization

Formal specification of a shared conceptualization

3
 Concept - Instance
Concept / Class / Universal (Metaphysics)

an abstract or general idea inferred or

derived from specific instances

Instance / Individual / Particular (Metaphysics) Person

object in reality, a copy of a abstract concept

with actual values for properties
Name: Thomas Wächter
Studied: Computer Science
LivesIn: Dresden
WorksAt: Biotec, TU-Dresden

4
 What is an ontology?

Formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization

Machine Consensual
readable knowledge

Concepts, properties, Abstract model of

functions, axioms some phenomena
are explicitly defined in the world

5
 What is Ontology…...
an ontology is a formal, explicit specification of a
shared conceptualization - Gruber
‘Formal’ refers to the fact that the ontology should
be machine readable.
‘Explicit’ means that the type of concepts used, and
the constraints on their use are explicitly defined.
‘Specification’ represents the conceptualization in
concrete form
‘Shared’ reflects that ontology should capture
consensual knowledge accepted by the communities
‘Conceptualization’ refers to an abstract model of
phenomena in the world by having identified the
relevant concepts of those phenomena.

6
 What is an Ontology?

Concepts: Units of thought: Classes and

individuals;
Protein, Gene, DNA, Hexokinase, glycolysis,…
Terms: Labels for concepts “Protein”, “Gene”,…
Relationships: Semantic links between concepts
Is-a-kind, is-a, part-of, name-of,…
Taxonomy backbone of ontology

7
 What is an Ontology?
 Ontology is the formal explicit description of -In practical terms –
developing an Ontology includes
 Defining classes in the ontology
Concepts in a domain of discourse (classes -sometimes called
concepts))
 Arranging the classes
in a taxonomic (subclass-superclass) hierarchy
 Defining slots and describing allowed values for these slots
Properties of each concept describing various features and
attributes of the concept (slots (sometimes called roles or
properties))
 Restrictions on slots
(facets (sometimes called role restrictions))
 Filling in the values for slots for instances
Ontology + set of individual instances of classes => knowledge
8
 Ontologies
• An ontology formally defines a common set
of terms that are used to describe and
represent a domain (e.g., librarianship,
medicine, etc.)
• Ontologies include computer-usable
definitions of basic concepts in the domain
and the relationships among them
• Ontologies are usually expressed in a logic-
based language

9
Why would someone want to develop
an ontology?
• To share common understanding of the
structure of information among people or
software agents
• To enable reuse of domain knowledge
• To make domain assumptions explicit
• To separate domain knowledge from the
operational knowledge
• To analyze domain knowledge

10
 Ontological Engineering and Related
Disciplines

Mathematics Logic Philosophy Enterprise Engineering

Industrial Engineering
Formal Methods Linguistics Business Management
Computer
Formal Semantics Ontology Science Database Theory
Sociology
Artificial Intelligence
Formal Ontology Informal Ontology

Knowledge Knowledge Representation

Management
Conceptual Modeling
Ontological Engineering

Knowledge Engineering Software/Data Engineering

Object Modeling
11
 Benefits

Communication between people

Interoperability between software agents

Reuse of domain knowledge

Make domain knowledge explicit

Analyze domain knowledge

Building an ontology is not a goal in

itself.

12
 Types of ontologies

[Guarino et al. 1999] - N. Guarino, C. Masolo, G. Vetere. OntoSeek: Content-Based

Access to the Web. In: IEEE Intelligent Systems, 14(3), 70--80, 1999.
13
Ontology -Examples
 Ontology - Simple examples I
Taxonomy
fruit fruit

apple lemon orange pomme citron orange

fruit
fruit
apple citrus pear
tropical temperate
lime lemon orange

15
 Ontology- Example II
University Related Ontology
Person
subClassOf
subClassOf

domain range
Student hasSuperVisor Researcher

type type
Frank hasSuperVisor Jeen

16
 Ontology –Example III

Body Part Living Thing

eats
has part
Plant
Arm
Animal eats

Leg eats Grass

Herbivore

Person Tree
Carnivore
Cow

17
18
 Ontologies – Example IV
Geographical Entity (GE)
is-a

flow_through
Natural GE Inhabited GE

capital_of
mountain river country city

instance_of located_in
F-Logic
capital_of
Ontology
Zugspitze Neckar Germany
height (m) length (km) similar
flow_through
located_in

2962 367 flow_through Stuttgart Berlin

Design: Philipp Cimiano

19
 Ontology –Example V
Object
is_a-1 is_a-1

knows described_in
Person Topic Document
related_to is_a-1
is_a-1
is_a-1
is_a-1 writes

Student Researcher Letter Email

is_similar_to
is_a-1 is_a-1
Affiliation
RULES:
Doctoral Student
PhD Student described_in is_about
instance_of-1 T D T D

York Sure P
writes
D
is_about
T P
knows
T
Tel Affiliation

+49 721 608 …. AIFB

 Representation Languages: RDF(S); OWL; Predicate Logic; F-

Logic

20
 Ontology – Example VI

Chemical

Molecule Compound Element Ion Atom

Molecular Ionic Molecular Ionic Non-Metal Metal

Compound Compound Element Molecule

Ionic Molecular Metaloid

Compound

21
EcoCyc

22
Ontologies and their relatives (1)

23
Ontologies and their relatives (2)

24
Cloud Computing

25
Human Health

26
27