Use of Upper Ontologies for Interoperation of Information Systems : A Tutorial

This report is a tutorial on how formal upper ontologies can be useful in building systems which involve interoperating autonomous information systems. It begins with an analysis of the problems that need to be solved in order to build such systems, then looks at a material ontology of institutional facts and speech acts which accounts for most of the content of such systems. It then shows how the OntoClean meta-ontological system can help us make sense of the structures involved in the ontologies needed to support interoperating autonomous systems, then finally how the formal upper ontologies of DOLCE and the Bunge-Wand-Weber system can help clarify the content of the material ontologies needed