Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Tourism & Entertainment
Museum
Cinema
…
The issue is that Business & Industry and Tourism & Entertainment are func-
tions, whereas Factory, Office, Museum, and Cinema are things—two different
types of categorization are mixed. This creates the classic problem of not being
sure where something fits in a hierarchy; for example, Cinema could also be reason-
ably put under Business & Industry. An ontological approach allows us to recognize
these different hierarchies and overcomes it by enabling us to create different types
of association between things; “is a kind of” is not the only tool in the box. In the
example, we can create two different hierarchies, one of things and the other of
functions, and relate them through some properties:
Topographic Feature
Factory
Office
Museum
Cinema
…
Function
Business
Industry
Tourism
Entertainment
…
Cinema has function Business.
Cinema has function Entertainment.
Because Merea Maps is taking an ontological approach, it can avoid putting lots
of different meanings into a single hierarchy.
10.4.4.2 Developing the Detail: Places
Merea Maps begins the process of describing the detail of their ontology by starting
with Places. To remind ourselves, Merea Maps describes a Place as follows: “A place
is somewhere (a Feature) where there is a designed purpose (intent) for something
to happen.” Going into more detail, the ontologists discover that Places have been
created by Merea Maps for a particular primary purpose and are things such as
farms, hospitals, factories, playing fields, and so on.
The first thing they need to do is assign subclasses to this class, and they are
able to do this from their Glossary, selecting those Features that seem to have a
designed purpose, such as factories, farms, hospitals, and golf courses. They then
take each of these subclasses in turn and build a description for it. So, if they start
with Farm:
Every Farm is a kind of Place.
Class:Farm
SubClassOf: Place
