Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Matthew West

Titel

10 - Motivation and Overview for an Ontological Framework

Ist Teil von

• Developing High Quality Data Models, 2011, p.107-122

Ort / Verlag

Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2011

Link zum Volltext

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This chapter explains why an ontological framework is valuable in data modeling, and introduces the broad sweep of the four-dimensional framework used, which is based on the work done when the data model for ISO 15926-2 was developed. Adopting different views in different parts of a data model or different data models may immediately give rise to inconsistency. Strangely, this is something that is rarely paid attention to in data model development. Philosophical ontology is full of arguments about why a particular ontological theory is good, and even more about objections to alternative theories. The approach is to recognize that data models are inevitably ontologies. One needs to apply a few selected and tested ideas from philosophical ontology that can make the data analysis process much less mysterious and much more reliable. Applying such ontological principles to data model development makes them more rigorous, and as a result, where data models are developed with the same ontological commitments, consistency is likely to be easier to achieve.