Ontology engineering and (digital) business ecosystems: A case for a pragmatic web

Omnipresent in many scientific disciplines nowadays is the notion of \´system\´ in the sense of a set of interacting, mutually influencing independent but adaptive actors with different roles and authorities in a dynamic, self-organising and self-regulating configuration. Business settings are compared to ecosystems. In computer science, the metaphor of a \´swarm \´ has been introduced. Any successful (human or artificial) agent interaction requires interoperability and meaning agreement next to trust and privacy. The vision of the Semantic Web incorporates these aspects, although it is argued that the complementary social aspects of the Web2.0 should be added. In this paper, we present an ontology engineering methodology that addresses these issues. And we advocate the idea of "Pragmatic Webs ", as a way of enabling Digital Business Ecosystems.