Comments on ontologies

Un article de Caverne des 1001 nuits.

Some comments can be made about ontologies.

Comment 1: This is a big one. They are a data centric approach. Data is not absolute in itself and is a consequence of the point of view of the viewer.

Comment 2: Problem in design between concept and attribute. Attribute can be a concept also. We are coming back to OO class diagram design issues.

Comment 3: Ontologies are too generic as a tool. There can be intermediate level of abstractions.

Comment 4: This is a big one. Ontologies should be able to represent much more than classic OO concepts. It could be possible to generalize the "instance of" concept. A is an instance B that is an instance of C. Generally, in language complexity, we can see this kind of multiple levels of instantiations.

Comment 5: This is also a big one. A tree is one of the most ambiguous way of representing knowledge. Knowledge is more a graph of nodes with various kinds of links. In ontologies, trees are used to represent inheritance, but inheritance can be multiple. Inheritance in indeed a very strong connection between classes and the tree view is proposing the interpretation that things could be represented in a tree (which is not the case at all).