On the Role and Application of Ontologies in Information Systems

Semantic Web research and recent efforts of large software companies have lead to mature technologies that can enable real-life semantic applications. While benefits such as advanced interoperability, search and data analysis are evident, little guidance is offered for the engineering of applications that can exploit them. To address this problem, the concept of an ontology, which is central to semantic applications, is compared to formalisms currently used in software engineering. More importantly, this paper proposes an extension to the three-tier architecture of enterprise information systems. The development of such a system is then demonstrated by the use of this architecture for an adaptive portal.