Dogma-mess

a meaning evolution support system for interorganizational ontology Engineering

Aldo de Moor

Pieter De Leenheer

Robert Meersman

pp. 189-202

in: Pascal Hitzler, Peter Øhrstrøm (eds), Conceptual structures: inspiration and application, Berlin, Springer, 2006

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the process of interorganizational ontology engineering. Scalable ontology engineering is hard to do in interorganizational settings where there are many pre-existing organizational ontologies and rapidly changing collaborative requirements. A complex socio-technical process of ontology alignment and meaning negotiation is therefore required. In particular, we are interested in how to increase the efficiency and relevance of this process using context dependencies between ontological elements. We describe the DOGMA-MESS methodology and system for scalable, community-grounded ontology engineering. We illustrate this methodology with examples taken from a case of interorganizational competency ontology evolution in the vocational training domain.