Ontologies for universal information systems

Abstract

The increasing complexity of problems addressed by massively distributed information systems has led to the development of a new generation of world-wide, informa tion systems, such as the World Wide Web project and the Hyper-G project. We present a powerful conceptual frame work for those systems using a knowledge representation language Telos, by concentration on the semantics of their domains. This framework is developed and based on careful analysis and abstraction of those existing systems. Capabilities of this integrated hybrid modelling frame work include meta-level facilities, constraint enforcement and inference facilities, as well as formal classification of domain knowledge into two distinct orthogonal subworlds. By creating a rich and precise conceptual framework, this paper provides a foundation for the specification and imple mentation of future universal information systems.