Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modelling: Advanced Concepts

There is a growing awareness amongst conceptual modellers that their tools (languages and methodologies) are in need of theoretical elucidation and foundation. used in a more or less intuitive und unreflected way. Furthermore, the design and maintenance of large scale information systems presupposes well-understood and reusable top-level ontologies. The tutorial is intended for researchers interested in ontological foundations of conceptual modelling frameworks, as well as in the role for well-founded ontologies for information systems. In the first part of the tutorial, we will re-visit the basic conceptual modeling primives in the light of formal ontology. In this context, we will briefly discuss also related approaches based on the ontology of Mario Bunge. In the second part, we will outline our concept of a library of foundational ontologies, and present some elements from a first reference module, the Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering (DOLCE). Finally, we will discuss the general perspectives of a unified ontology-driven conceptual modeling methodology.