An extended XML approach to ontology engineering

Ontologies represent a promising solution to support the development of a new generation of information systems, more robust, effective, and suited for interoperability among different enterprises. However, the construction of a Business and Enterprise Ontology (BEO) is a long and costly task, that requires expert ontology engineers. To Support this task, the OPAL (Object, Process, Actor modeling Language) methodology is proposed. The core of OPAL is a business and enterprise ontology framework. Much alike tile framework approach proposed in Software Engineering, ontology framework supplies to the ontology engineer a few basic guidelines to ease the construction of a domain ontology. OPAL is supported by a tool, SymOntos, that allows an ontology to be constructed by simply filling a number of concept defining forms.