Some Industrial Experiences in the Development and Use of Ontologies

Ontologies have been part of developing information systems in Shell for some twenty years, taking the form of data models and reference data used within information systems. A problem in reusing or integrating systems is the context that they assume, which may not be valid beyond the scope of an implementation. Lessons learnt include trying to ensure that the context is explicit, and that what are really local rules in a global context are not defined as global rules in a local context. These lessons have been applied in the development of International Standards to provide an architecture for integration and a data model that includes both a foundation ontology that has been developed on a well defined and consistent basis, and provides a framework for extension of the ontology through reference data.