Templates for Supporting Conceptual Modeling: a Delicate Balance

Abstract. Using templates for conceptual modeling is becoming a fashionable way to guide and facilitate Domain Experts in providing rich and good quality knowledge. A possibility to build templates without starting from scratch is grounding them on existing foundational and core ontologies. In this paper we investigate how these ontologies can be effectively used for the construction of templates able to guarantee a balance between usability and rigorousness. We report findings and lesson learned from a survey carried out for the evaluation of templates built from existing foundational and core ontologies in the enterprise domain.