Using the Business Ontology to Develop Enterprise Standards

The Importance Of Understanding The Structures Of The Enterprise Layers

An ontology is an intentional semantic structure that encodes the set of objects and terms that are presumed to exist in some area of interest (i.e. the universe of discourse or semantic domain), the relationships that is between them and the implicit rules constraining the structure of this (piece of) reality.(Genesereth & Nilsson, 1987; Nicola Guarino & Giaretta, 1995) In this definition, intentional refers to a structure describing various possible states of affairs, as opposed to extensional, which would refer to a structure describing a particular state of affairs. The word semantic indicates that the structure has meaning, which is defined as the relationship between (a structure of) symbols and a mental model of the intentional structure in the mind of the observer. This mental model is often called a conceptualization (Gruber, 1993). Semantics are an aspect of semiotics, like syntax, which distinguishes valid from invalid symbol structures, and like pragmatics, which relates symbols to their meaning within a context (e.g., the community in which they are shared). (Cordeiro & Filipe, 2004) The structures and context in the organizations should be considered as a whole (von Rosing, Zachman, von Scheel, 2015) which subsequently includes the views and models that capture the: