Changes which are allowed after a harmonisation process

3.6 Overview of the final structure

4.1.2 Changes which are allowed after a harmonisation process

The following types of changes alter the reference ontology and thus potentially affect other users. These changes can be done therefore only after a harmonisation process, where a board of ontology and domain experts decide whether the proposed changes are acceptable, or whether there is a better alternative solution.

• Changing an existing business data ontology entity definition

• Proposing new entities to be included into the reference ontology

It is important to note that although simple extensions of the business data ontol-ogy in specific domain ontologies can be done independently of the other users (as it was described previously), developers of those specialised ontologies are encouraged to propagate ontology entities to the reference ontology which are thought to be general enough for that. This improves semantic interoperability among the specific ontolo-gies using the reference ontology, as those general concepts originally missing from the reference ontology will not be redefined again and again in each industry specific ontology.

5 Conclusion

In this deliverable we presented an the structure and the development process of a high-level business data ontology. As it is impossible to create an ontology generally for ‘business’, we concentrated on the typical inter-domain business scenario of e-procurement.

By providing a detailed documentation of our ontology we hope to foster ontology reuse in DIP. In particular we expect the developed business data ontology to serve as the common semantic core for the use case ontologies, and thus make devising ontology-to-ontology mediators [15] during the project easier.

References

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Delievarable D3.1, DIP Consortium, 2004.

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[5] Christian Drumm. Finding Ariadne’s thread in the data mediation maze. In First AKT Workshop on Semantic Web Services (AKT-SWS), 2004. to be published.

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[7] Asunción Gómez-Pérez. Handbook of Applied Expert Systems, chapter Knowledge Sharing and Reuse. CRC Press, 1997.

[8] Asunción Gómez-Pérez, Mariano Fernández-López, and Oscar Corcho. Onto-logical Engineering with examples from the areas of Knowledge Management, e-Commerce and the Semantic Web. Advanced Information and Knowledge Process-ing. Springer, 1st edition, 2004.

[9] Michael Kifer, Georg Lausen, and Wu James. Logical foundations of object-oriented and frame-based languages. Journal of ACM, May 1995.

[10] Edward Kilgarriff, Joachim Quantz, Christian de Sainte Marie, and Laurentiu Vasiliu. Report on relevant e-business/e-commerce formats/standards including assessment and requirements for mapping/mediation. Delievarable D7.2, DIP Consortium, 25 June 2004.

[11] Deborah L. McGuinness and Frank van Harmelen (editors). Owl web ontol-ogy language overview. Recommendation, W3C, february 2004. available from http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/.

[12] Bill Meadows and Lisa Seaburg. Universal Business Language 1.0, 2004. OASIS Committee Draft, published on 15 September 2004, available at http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/.

[13] Boris Motik and Stefano Spaccapietra. Ontology reasoning and querying: Report on the requirements analysis and the state of the art. Delievarable D1.1, DIP Consortium, 2004.

[14] Borislav Popov, Atanas Kiryakov, Damyan Ognyanoff, Dimitar Manov, and Angel Kirilov. KIM – a semantic platform for information extraction and retrieval. Nat.

Lang. Eng., 10(3-4):375–392, 2004.

[15] Dumitru Roman, Holger Lausen, and Uwe Keller (editors). Web service modeling ontology (wsmo). Technical Report D2 version 1.0, WSMO deliverable, 2004.

available from http://www.wsmo.org/2004/d2/v1.0/.

[16] Stuart J. Russel and Peter Norvig. Artificail Intelligence: A Modern Approach.

Prentice Hall, 2 edition, 2003.

[17] John F. Sowa. Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computa-tional Foundations. Brooks Cole Publishing Co., Pacific Grove, CA, 2000.

[18] York Sure. Methodology, tools & case studies for ontology based knowledge man-agement. PhD thesis, University of Karlsruhe, May 2003.

[19] York Sure and Rudi Studer. On-to-knowledge methodology. On-To-Knowledge Deliverable 18, AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, 2002. Available at http://www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS/ysu/publications/OTK-D18 v1-0.pdf.

[20] Ivan Terziev, Atanas Kiryakov, and Dimitar Manov. Base upper-level ontology (BULO) guidance. Deliverable D1.8.1, SEKT Consortium, 2004. draft version.

[21] Frank van Harmelen, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, and Ian Horrocks (editors).

DAML+OIL (March 2001) reference description. Technical report, DARPA, mar 2001. available from http://www.daml.org/2001/03/reference.

A Appendix: RDF Source of the Business Data Ontology

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<!DOCTYPE rdf:RDF [

<!ENTITY bdo ’http://dip.semanticweb.org/ontologies/businessData#’>

<!ENTITY bulo ’http://bulo.semanticweb.org/bulo#’>

<!ENTITY owl ’http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#’>

<!ENTITY xsd ’http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#’>

<rdf:RDF xmlns:bulo="&bulo;"

xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"

xmlns:xsd="&xsd;"

xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"

xmlns="&bdo;"

xmlns:owl="&owl;"

xmlns:bdo="&bdo;"

xml:base="http://dip.semanticweb.org/ontologies/businessData">

<owl:Ontology

rdf:about="http://dip.semanticweb.org/ontologies/businessData">

<owl:imports rdf:resource="http://bulo.semanticweb.org/bulo"/>

</owl:Ontology>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Numeric">

<rdfs:label>Numeric</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:comment> Numeric information that is assigned or is determined by calculation, counting, or sequencing. It does not require a unit of quantity or unit of measure. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard (http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)

</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bulo;Number"/>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;BaseType"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;TaxTotal">

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Quantity"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:label>TaxTotal</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:comment>information relating to the total tax for one type of tax, e.g. VAT (Value Added Tax) and all categories of that tax type.

This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Quantity">

<rdfs:comment>Any specification of how many or how much of something there is. The main difference between Quantity and a simple Number is that quantities always have units associated with

them.</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:label>Quantity</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bulo;Abstract"/>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;LotIdentification">

<rdfs:comment>information relating to a lot (an identifier to allow the recall of the item if necessary) This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:label>LotIdentification</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Reference"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;AcknowledgementResponseCode">

<rdfs:label>AcknowledgementResponseCode</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Code"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:comment>A character string (letters, figures or symbols) that for brevity and/or language independence may be used to represent or replace a definitive value or text of an Attribute together with relevant supplementary information. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;HazardousItem">

<rdfs:comment>information about a hazardous item. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:label>HazardousItem</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Item"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;InvoiceLine">

<rdfs:comment>information directly relating to a line item of a transaction. It identifies the item but only includes details about the item that are pertinent to one occurrence on a line item, e.g.

quantity etc. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard (http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:label>InvoiceLine</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;TransactionLine"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Rate">

<rdfs:comment>Rate is a value expresses the ratio per specified unit

and a rate basis unit. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard (http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;BaseType"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:label>Rate</rdfs:label>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Identifier">

<rdfs:label>Identifier</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:comment>A character string to identify and distinguish

uniquely, one instance of an object in an identification scheme from all other objects in the same scheme together with relevant

supplementary information. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0

standard (http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bulo;InformationResource"/>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;BaseType"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;LegalTotal">

<rdfs:comment>calculated amount that is required on an invoice for legal purposes. (Note: Total required for taxation purposes are under tax Total.) This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard (http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bdo;Quantity"/>

<rdfs:label>LegalTotal</rdfs:label>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;PaymentMeans">

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;TradingInformation"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:comment>information directly relating to the means of payment.

This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:label>PaymentMeans</rdfs:label>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Delivery">

<rdfs:label>Delivery</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;TradeEvent"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:comment>delivery information about a quantity and an event.

This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;OperatorCode">

<rdfs:label>OperatorCode</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Code"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Language">

<rdfs:label>Language</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:comment>information directly relating to a language. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bulo;Language"/>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Contact">

<rdfs:comment>information that identifies the contact person or department together with information about how they can be contacted. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/) Original name was:

Contact</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:label>Contact</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bulo;Role"/>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Order">

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;OrderDescription"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:label>Order</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bulo;Order"/>

<rdfs:comment>a document that contains information directly relating to the economic event of ordering products. Alternative business terms: Purchase Order This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard (http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Code">

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:label>Code</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Text"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;LatitudeDirectionCode">

<rdfs:label>LatitudeDirectionCode</rdfs:label>

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bdo;Code"/>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;OrderReference">

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;DocumentReference"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:comment>identifies an order (minimal references) This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:label>OrderReference</rdfs:label>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;LineItem">

<rdfs:label>LineItem</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:comment>information directly relating to a line item of a transaction. It identifies the item but only includes details about the item that are pertinent to one occurrence on a line item, e.g.

quantity etc. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard (http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;TransactionLine"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;TaxCategory">

<rdfs:label>TaxCategory</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:comment>information directly relating to a specific tax category This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Classification"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;TaxSubTotal">

<rdfs:label>TaxSubTotal</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:comment>information relating to the tax sub total for one type of tax, e.g. VAT (Value Added Tax) and one category. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bdo;Quantity"/>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Amount">

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bdo;Quantity"/>

<rdfs:comment>A number of monetary units specified in a currency where the unit of currency is explicit or implied. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;BaseType"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:label>Amount</rdfs:label>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;BasePrice">

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bdo;Quantity"/>

<rdfs:comment>information that directly relates to a base or

starting price for an object. Another term may be Gross Price (but that is not strictly correct). This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard (http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:label>BasePrice</rdfs:label>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Measure">

<rdfs:label>Measure</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:comment>A numeric value determined by measuring an object along with the specified unit of measure. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;NonFinancialQuantity"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;CommunicationMeans">

<rdfs:label>CommunicationMeans</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:comment>information that identifies a means of communicating This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/) Original UBL name:

Communication</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Classification"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Video">

<rdfs:label>Video</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;BinaryObject"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:comment>Relating to the recording, reproducing or broadcasting of visual images on magnetic tape or digitially. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Allowance">

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;AllowanceCharge"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:label>Allowance</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:comment>allowance (decrease in cost)</rdfs:comment>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Graphic">

<rdfs:label>Graphic</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:comment>A diagram, graph, mathematical curves, or similar representation. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard (http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;BinaryObject"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Percent">

<rdfs:comment>PercentType indicates the percentage. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;BaseType"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:label>Percent</rdfs:label>

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bulo;Percent"/>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Name">

<rdfs:subClassOf>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;Text"/>

</rdfs:subClassOf>

<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="&bulo;Alias"/>

<rdfs:comment>NameType is a human readable indication of names. This entity comes from the UBL 1.0 standard

(http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/)</rdfs:comment>

<rdfs:label>Name</rdfs:label>

</owl:Class>

<owl:Class rdf:about="&bdo;SalesConditions">

<rdfs:label>SalesConditions</rdfs:label>

In document DIP FP WP3: Service Ontologies and Service Description D3.3 A Business Data Ontology (Page 22-141)