In the work of the Ontology Summit this week in Gaithersburg, USA, our working group tried to get its collective head around the idea of ontologies having “dimensions”. These dimensions are intended for use to evaluate the significant presence within one ontology or another of certain characteristics, such as expressive power, intended use, etc.
The problem we had was being presented with each of the dimensions as having some simple relationship to the ontology (an axis) and to each other other (whether co-variant, orthogonal, etc.)
We ended up with a novel approach using a “Concept Map” – dare I say even: an “ontology of ontology” – which will be debated further in the Summit and beyond
Pensive Peter 