Motivation for this Book Ontologies have received increasing attention
over the last two decades. Their roots can be traced back to the ancient
philosophers, who were interested in a c- ceptualization of the world.
In the more recent past, ontologies and ontological engineering have
evolved in computer science, building on various roots such as logics,
knowledge representation, information modeling and management, and
(knowledge-based) information systems. Most recently, largely driven by
the next generation internet, the so-called Semantic Web, ontological
software engineering has developed into a scientific field of its own,
which puts particular emphasis on the theoretical foundations of
representation and reasoning, and on the methods and tools required for
building ontology-based software applications in diverse domains. Though
this field is largely dominated by computer science, close re- tionships
have been established with its diverse areas of application, where -
searchers are interested in exploiting the results of ontological
software engine- ing, particularly to build large knowledge-intensive
applications at high productivity and low maintenance effort.
Consequently, a large number of scientific papers and monographs have
been p- lished in the very recent past dealing with the theory and
practice of ontological software engineering. So far, the majority of
those books are dedicated to the th- retical foundations of ontologies,
including philosophical treatises and their re- tionships to established
methods in information systems and ontological software engineering.
