Multi-perspective ontologies: Resolving common ontology development problems

Ontology – the theory of objects and their relationships – has become a hot topic in recent years, with its use for indexing knowledge and structuring knowledge in knowledge management and knowledge engineering. However, attempts to develop ontologies suffer from a number of problems in practical situations. This paper outlines an approach to ontology development based on multi-perspective modelling – that is, dividing a single ontology into multiple ontologies according to the type of knowledge that is addressed. It is argued that this approach is able to resolve some of the common problems that arise in ontology development.