The main purpose of an ontology is to enable communication between computer systems in in a way that is independent of the individual system technologies, information architectures and application domain.

The key ingredients that make up an ontology are a vocabulary of basic terms and a precise specification of what those terms mean.

The term 'ontology' has been used in this way for a number of years by the artificial intelligence and knowledge representation community, but is now becoming part of the standard terminology of a much wide community including object modelling and XML.

An ontology is more than an agreed vocabulary

• An ontology provides a set of well-founded constructs that can be leveraged to build meaningful higher level knowledge. The terms in an ontology are selected with great care, ensuring that the most basic (abstract) foundational concepts and distinctions are defined and specified. The terms chosen form a complete set, whose relationship one to another is defined using formal techniques. It is these formally defined relationships that provide the semantic basis for the terminology chosen.

An ontology is more than a taxonomy or classification of terms

• Although taxonomy contributes to the semantics of a term in a vocabulary, ontologies include richer relationships between terms. It is these rich relationships that enable the expression of domain-specific knowledge, without the need to include domain-specific terms.

In agent based systems, such as proposed for next generation electronic commerce, the adoption of a shared ontology allows commerce agents to simultaneously:

• interoperate without misunderstanding,
• retain a high degree of autonomy, flexibility and agility.

Commerce agents can therefore be highly adaptable yet are able to meaningfully communicate domain-specific knowledge. They do this by using only the basic terms and relationships defined in the ontology. It is the precise definitions of the basic terms that allows those terms to be combined to form meaningful higher level knowledge.

Why are ontologies important to eCommerce?

Ontology is a central issue for the development of Internet commerce systems:

• Large scale internetworked information spaces will be a prominent, even determining, feature of most businesses, governmental and personal informational activity in the future.
• Standardisation of business models, processes, and knowledge architecture is critical to achieving the promised return on investment (RoI) from Internet commerce.
• The main barrier to electronic commerce lies in the need for applications to meaningfully share information, not in the reliability or security of the Internet. This is because of the variety of enterprise and e-commerce systems deployed by businesses and the way these systems are variously configured and used.
• Interoperability problems are particularly acute when a large number of trading partners attempt to agree and define the standards for interoperation, yet this is precisely the condition in which RoI can be maximised.

Although it is useful to strive for the adoption of a single common domain-specific standard for content and transactions, this is often difficult to achieve, particularly in cross-industry initiatives, where companies co-operate and compete with one another. In addition:

• Commercial practices vary widely and cannot always be aligned for a variety of technical, practical, organisational and political reasons.
• The complexity of how to describe organisations, their products & services, separately and in combination, and the interactions between them is a formidable task.
• It is usually impossible to establish, a priori, rules (technical or procedural) governing participation in an electronic marketplace.
• Adoption of a single common standard can place limits on the business models adopted by trading partners and potentially reduce their ability to fully participate in Internet commerce.

An alternative strategy is to develop shared foundational ontologies, and use these as the basis for interoperation among trading partners in electronic markets. An ontology based approach has the potential to significantly accelerate the penetration of electronic commerce within vertical industry sectors, by enabling interoperability at the business level, reducing the need for standardisation at the technical level. This will enable services to adapt to the rapidly changing online environment.

How does ontology relate to the eXtensible Markup Language (XML)?

XML is widely predicted to improve the degree of interoperation between commerce agents on the Internet. Yet XML does not address ontology and provides only a syntactic representation of knowledge. For this reason, many Internet commerce initiatives are developing taxonomies to support XML-based interoperation. These developments mostly focus upon the identification of standard "tags", and not the underlying ontology. Interoperation is therefore dependent upon each trading partner agreeing to use particular tag sets and using these consistently. It is not clear that this strategy will achieve the degree of interoperation and flexibility sought by Ontology.Org.

We argue that an ontology-based approach will enable greater agility and flexibility in the business models possible and reduce the need for organisations to adopt common infrastructure and implement domain-specific standards. Spontaneous and organised commerce between trading partners will be more viable.

Are ontologies important in other domains?

Yes. Ontologies are finding applicability in many other areas of information systems engineering, for example, in database design, in object systems, in knowledge based systems and within many application areas, such as datawarehousing, knowledge management, computer supported collaborative working and enterprise integration.

Communities differ regarding the nature of the knowledge they are concerned with, and the purpose to which it will be put.

• In the AI community, the focus is on knowledge-based systems, where ontologies and problem-solving methods go hand in hand -- the former capture domain knowledge, and the latter the task knowledge.
• The natural language community use ontologies to characterise word meaning and sense.
• The database community uses ontologies as conceptual schema, and are concerned, among other things, with semantic inter-operability of heterogeneous databases.
• Object-Oriented design methods use ontologies as domain models for specifying software systems that need not be knowledge-based.
• Ontologies are also used for semantic-based information retrieval. The ontologies specify the meaning of the concepts to be searched for.
• More recently, XML is being used for information retrieval, and it is becoming all too obvious that it's utility is severely limited unless people can agree on the semantics of the terms being used in the meta-data.

The glue that (conceptually) binds these communities together is the ability of ontologies to reduce semantic ambiguity for the purpose of sharing and reusing knowledge, and/or to achieve inter-operability.

The ultimate goal is the development of reusable ontologies that can be applied across multiple disciplines.

What is Ontology.Org?

Ontology.Org is an independent industry and research forum focussed upon the application of ontologies in Internet commerce. It is the central goal of Ontology.Org to use ontologies to address the problems that impact the formation and sustainability of large electronic trading groups.

When was Ontology.Org formed and why?

Ontology.Org was formed in May of 1998. It was founded to highlight the need for ontology in Internet commerce.

The group that formed Ontology.Org judged that it was the right time to highlight ontology among Internet commerce practitioners and researchers, especially because of the rapid emergence of XML.

Since XML does not address ontology there is the potential to create islands of interoperation and therefore limit participation by businesses in commercial opportunities, unless the underlying issue of semantics is addressed simultaneously, despite XML's well documented and acknowledged benefits.

Who formed Ontology.Org?

Ontology.Org was founded by Howard Smith and Kevin Poulter and is now supported by a group of industry and academic experts: the Ontology.Org Steering Group. These individuals have a background in ontology, Internet commerce and related disciplines. They are:

• Mark Fox, Professor of Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto
• Tom Gruber, Chief Technology Officer, Intraspect Software
• Ann Macintosh, Director, International Teledemocracy Centre
• Thomas Malone, Professor of Information Systems at the MIT Sloan School of Management, also Chairman, Phios Corp.
• Deborah McGuinness, Associate Director and Senior Research Scientist of the Knowledge Systems Lab at Stanford University
• Enrico Motta, Senior research fellow, Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University
• Walid Mougayar, President, CYBERManagement, Inc.
• Leo Obrst, Director of Ontological Engineering, VerticalNet
• Nigel Shadbolt, Professor of Intelligent Systems, University of Nottingham
• David Siegel, Chairman, Studio Verso
• Mike Uschold, Ontology Development and Application Specialist, Applied Research and Technology, The Boeing Company

What is Computer Sciences Corporation's role in Ontology.Org?

Computer Sciences Corporation is the sponsor of CSC's participation in the activity. CSC wishes to be able to support its clients in the development of their Internet commerce infrastructure, in a way that permits them to participate to the greatest possible extent in electronic markets. Ontology.Org is one component of CSC's investment in Internet commerce capability development.

Howard Smith and Kevin Poulter of Computer Sciences Corporation act as Director and Chief Technology Officer respectively. Howard and Kevin are responsible for CSC's eBusiness strategy and technology architecture in Europe.

Does Ontology.Org work with other industry initiatives?

Yes. Ontology.Org will co-operate with other groups working on similar issues in the domain of Internet commerce. For example, Ontology.Org has formed a strategic alliance with CommerceNet, the premier industry consortium for companies using, promoting and building electronic commerce solutions on the Internet.

The alliance was announced publicly on October 9th 1998.

What is covered by the strategic alliance with CommerceNet?

CommerceNet and Ontology.Org will study the incorporation of ontology within XML-based architectures, in a range of research projects and industrial pilots. Results will be integrated with standardisation efforts. Ontology.Org will work with CommerceNet in the following ways:

• Ontology.Org will act as a focal point on behalf of CommerceNet for ontology issues that arise in CommerceNet programmes.
• Ontology.Org will join the CommerceNet eCo Framework Project, to bring ontology and knowledge engineering expertise to the standardisation process.
• Ontology.Org will supply ontology-related services to CommerceNet members, including strategic knowledge engineering consulting and ontology development.
• Ontology.Org will work with CommerceNet to establish a global clearinghouse for ontologies that have direct or indirect implications to Internet commerce.
• Ontology.Org will work with CommerceNet to architect CommerceNet's eCommerce Registry Service, which will be a critical component of next generation Internet commerce.

What activities are currently in process?

Ontology.Org is developing a reference-architecture for large-scale electronic marketplaces. The architecture, based on the principles of reusable ontologies, comprises the following elements:

• WebSourcing^SM, the technical mechanisms by which businesses share digital content in support of commerce.
• Commercial Process Reengineering^SM, the frameworks, methods and standards by which businesses transition themselves for participation in an electronic marketplace.
• Computer Assisted Internet Engineering^SM, the set of methods and supporting tools by which an electronic marketplace is constructed.

WebSourcing^SM, Commercial Process Reengineering^SM and Computer Assisted Internet Engineering^SM are service marks of Computer Sciences Corporation.

Where can I found out more about Ontology.Org?

Ontology.Org has a Web site, www.ontology.org. A mailing list facility on the site lets interested individuals subscribe to a weekly news bulletin. The site is updated weekly with interesting news about developments in Internet commerce, XML and ontology.

Can I apply to join Ontology.Org?

Yes, Ontology.Org is now accepting applications for membership. Membership is based solely upon the ability of the member to further the aims of Ontology.Org.

Specifically, Ontology.Org is seeking:

• Industrial Sponsor members
• Architecture Partners

More information about the Architecture Partner Programme is available.