A faceted approach to building ontologies

An ontology can be defined as a conceptualization of a domain or subject area typically captured in an abstract model of how people think about things in the domain. Humans have been producing ontologies for millennia to understand and explain our rationale and environment. Only recently has the process of building ontologies become a research topic of interest. Today, ontologies are built very much ad-hoc. A terminology is first developed providing a controlled vocabulary for the subject area or domain of interest, then it is organized into a taxonomy where key concepts are identified, and finally these concepts are defined and related to create an ontology. This paper describes how a domain analysis method based on faceted classification can be used for building ontologies. It relates domain analysis and ontologies, illustrates a step in the domain analysis method for identifying and categorizing concepts, and describes how this step, borrowed from library science, is incorporated into the domain analysis method. The paper also gives an overview of the method and describes a tool for automating parts of the process.