Ontology Double Articulation

The notion of Ontology Double Articulation refers to a methodological principle in ontology engineering. The idea is that an ontology should be built as separate domain axiomatizations and application axiomatization(s). In other words an application axiomatization should be built in terms of (i.e. commits to) a domain axiomatization. While a domain axiomatization focuses on the characterization of the intended meaning (i.e. intended models) of a vocabulary at the domain level, application axiomatizations mainly focus on the usability of this vocabulary according to certain application/usability perspectives. An application axiomatization is intended to specify the legal models (a subset of the intended models) of the application(s) interest. For simplicity, one can imagine WordNet as a domain axiomatization, and ORM schema (or an OWL ontology) as an application axiomatization, where all terms/object-types in the schema are linked with terms/synsets in WordNet. The idea here is to enable: reusability of domain knowledge and usability of application knowledge, interoperability of applications. See (Jarrar 2005, Jarrar 2006, Jarrar and Meersman 2007).

The CContology is an ebusiness ontology, that was built according to this Ontology Double Articulation principle. DogmaModeler is a modeling tool that was also supports this principle.