=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2050/foust-paper9
|storemode=property
|title=Pizza & Wine: The Need for Educational Tools for Foundational Ontologies
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2050/FOUST_paper_9.pdf
|volume=Vol-2050
|authors=Stefan Schulz,Martin Boeker,José Antonio Vera Ramos,Ludger Jansen
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/jowo/SchulzBRJ17
}}
==Pizza & Wine: The Need for Educational Tools for Foundational Ontologies==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2050/FOUST_paper_9.pdf
Pizza & Wine: The Need for Educational
Tools for Foundational Ontologies
Stefan SCHULZa,b,1, Martin BOEKERb, José A. VERA RAMOSa,c and Ludger JANSENd
a
Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics and Documentation,
Medical University of Graz, Austria
b
Institute for Medical Biometry and Statistics,
Faculty of Medicine and Medical Center - University of Freiburg, Germany
c
Faculty of Biology, University of Murcia, Spain
d
Institute of Philosophy, University of Rostock, Germany
Abstract. The educational ontologies PIZZA and WINE&FOOD have been
widely used to teach ontology methods and tools. However, the two ontologies
have remained largely unchanged for many years, despite increasing awareness of
foundational principles for good ontology design (GoodOD). Recognizing that the
two ontologies are lagging behind such principles, we analysed and re-designed
them by strictly adhering to established upper-level ontology constraints provided
by the foundation ontology BioTopLite2 (BTL2). As a result, the redesign required
clarifying the ontological commitment of the PIZZA and WINE&FOOD classes
by assigning them to top-level classes. We expect the ongoing redesign effort to
yield a harmonized PIZZA&WINE&FOOD ontology. The redesign reflects the
change in requirements for educational ontologies, which have now to take into
account the privileged role that should be granted to foundational ontologies in
Applied Ontology education.
Keywords. Foundational Ontologies, Educational Ontologies
1. Introduction
Teaching ontology to a broad variety of users requires a representational domain that is
both intuitively understandable and complex enough to demonstrate all important
features of ontology languages and editors. This is the reason why the ontologies
WINE&FOOD and PIZZA have found broad acceptance in educational settings which
focus on Description Logics (DLs) and the Semantic Web. WINE&FOOD was
originally developed for teaching CLASSIC [1], an early dialect of description logics
(DL), and was later transformed into Protégé Frames, for which ontology-oriented
tutorials existed [2]. In the last stage of its current development, it was transformed into
OWL-DL, and examples taken from WINE&FOOD were used to explain syntax and
semantics in the first OWL-DL guide [3]. PIZZA was developed for training courses at
the University of Manchester with the goal to teach the Web Ontology Language
(OWL) and the ontology editor Protégé [4], where examples from PIZZA are used in
its printed documentation. The two ontologies are, hence, primarily tailored to
demonstrate the power of DL representation and reasoning (set theory, restrictions and
1
Corresponding author: Stefan Schulz, Medical University of Graz, Auenbruggerplatz 2/V, 8036 Graz
(Austria), E-mail: stefan.schulz@medunigraz.at.
quantifications), and to acquaint the students with Protégé. However, both ontologies
have not been updated for years, and they have not kept up with more recent tendencies
in ontology development, such as the good practice in the new technical discipline of
Applied Ontology [5] to employ principles of the philosophical discipline of Ontology
when engineering ontology artefacts. Both educational ontologies that are under
scrutiny here are agnostic regarding ontological upper-levels and naming conventions,
as well as regarding the de facto adoption of the language profiles OWL-EL and OWL-
DL as the ones supported by the most popular DL reasoners.
The objective of this paper is to evaluate the two educational ontologies on the
background of these new developments. We first analyse how PIZZA and
WINE&FOOD, in their current state, are positioned regarding quality criteria for good
ontology design. Second, we test whether they can be redesigned to meet these criteria
by aligning them with a pre-existing foundational ontology. Finally, we investigate
whether the redesigned ontologies support two learning objectives, viz. (i) mastering
OWL and description logics and (ii) understanding foundational ontologies.
This paper primarily describes the alignment of these two ontologies with a
foundational ontology. But besides giving an insight into redesign aspects (which could
be an educational goal per se), we will also discuss the goals of ontology education,
possible methods, the role of foundational ontologies in this process and the usefulness
of PIZZA and WINE&FOOD when seen in this light.
2. Materials
We use the PIZZA ontology version 2.0.02 and the WINE&FOOD ontology, which is
provided as an annex to the 2004 OWL Web Ontology guide.3 “P” is used as
namespace prefix for PIZZA, “W” for WINE&FOOD. PIZZA contains 100 classes and
five individuals plus five object properties with three corresponding inverses (Table 1).
Most of its content is under Food, which branches into the three disjoint classes Pizza,
PizzaBase, and PizzaTopping. Pizza has subclasses like: CheeseyPizza, MeatyPizza,
InterestingPizza, VegetarianPizza, etc. These subclasses of Pizza classes are subsumed
under the helper class NamedPizza. The class PizzaTopping has subclasses like
CheeseTopping, FishTopping, MeatTopping, etc. All toppings are primitive classes
apart from SpicyTopping and VegetarianTopping.
Axioms describe the composition of pizzas according to their base, toppings
and country of origin of the recipe. Only the more general classes of the Pizza ontology
are fully defined, e.g.:
P:VegetarianPizza equivalentTo P:Pizza and not (P:hasTopping some P:MeatTopping)
and not (P:hasTopping some P:FishTopping)
PIZZA uses role hierarchies, nominals, inverse roles, unqualified number
restrictions and data types [6]. The ontology includes six individuals, five of which are
used in the extensional definition of the class P:Country. Most classes have English
labels as annotation properties, according to the W3C standard [3] and many also
Brazilian Portuguese ones. The annotation property ‘comment’ is mostly left blank, in
2
https://protege.stanford.edu/ontologies/pizza/pizza.owl
3
https://www.w3.org/TR/owl-guide/wine.rdf
some cases it repeats the formal definition of a class; in other cases it has educational
content.
Table 1. Object properties of PIZZA with algebraic properties, domain and range. Numbers indicate usage,
as displayed by Protégé
Object property / Inverse Algebraic properties Domain Range
P:hasCountryOfOrigin (14) – owl:Thing owl:Thing
P:hasIngredient (17) / transitive P:Food P:Food
P:isIngredientOf(17)
P:hasTopping (301) / (inv) functional P:Pizza P:PizzaTopping
P:isToppingOf (15)
P:hasBase (22) / P:isBaseOf (16) (inv) functional P:Pizza P:PizzaBase
P:hasSpiciness (77) functional owl:Thing P:Spiciness
Table 2. Object properties of WINE&FOOD with algebraic properties, domain and range. Numbers indicate
usage, as displayed by Protégé. Dashes are used to represent absence of algebraic properties
Object property / Inverse Algebraic Domain Range
properties
W:adjacentRegion(10) symmetric W:Region W:Region
W:course (10) – W:Meal W:MealCourse
W:hasDrink (132) – W:MealCourse W:PotableLiquid
W:hasFood (56) – W:MealCourse W:EdibleThing
W:hasMaker (116) / functional owl:Thing owl:Thing
W:producesWine (6)
W:hasVintageYear(12) functional W:Vintage W:VintageYear
W:hasWineDescriptor(14) – W:Wine W:WineDescriptor
W:hasBody (162) functional owl:Thing W:WineBody
W:hasColor (94) functional W:Wine W:WineColor
W:hasFlavor (170) functional owl:Thing W:WineFlavor
W:hasSugar (168) functional owl:Thing W:WineSugar
W:locatedIn (188) transitive owl:Thing W:Region
W:madeFromFruit (10) – W:ConsumableThing W:Fruit
W:madeFromGrape(92) / – W:Wine W:WineGrape
W:madeIntoWine (6)
For WINE&FOOD we use the namespace prefix “W”. The ontology contains 138
classes, 16 object properties, one data type property and 206 individuals (e.g. with wine
colours such as W:Red, W:Rose and W:White as individuals). The main classes are:
W:Wine, W:Region, W:Vintage, W:VintageYear, W:Winery, and W:WineDescriptor
with the subclasses W:WineColor and W:WineTaste. Table 2 shows the object
properties. There is one datatype property, W:yearValue.
3. Methods
We evaluate the ontologies in the light of the quality criteria stated in the GoodOD
guideline for good ontology design of OWL ontologies with Protégé [7]. On the
assumption that usability, maintainability and sustainable evolution of ontologies are
important desiderata, the GoodOD guideline and its recommendations aim at
optimising user-friendliness and interoperability of DL-based ontologies. GoodOD
takes into account established best practice rules in ontology design [8] and class
labelling [9], and reflects good practice of many previously published OWL ontologies.
For the present study, we use the following quality requirements in particular:
● DL semantics should not be compromised: without exception, class-level
axioms must hold true for all members of a class.
● There should be a robust and interoperable top-level ontology whose classes
cover the domain exhaustively. For better usability, the top level is designed in
a way that all domain classes can be uniquely attributed to one top-level class.
● Naming and annotation conventions should be consistently followed.
● Classes should always correspond to ‘repeatable’ features of the domain. E.g.,
the class P:Pizza can be instantiated by many particular pizzas; and P:Spicy is
repeated in every particular spiciness.
● The division between individuals and classes should reflect the ontological or
set-theoretic interpretation of ontology classes and not be motivated by mere
subjective criteria for particular use cases.
● The object properties provided by the upper level ontology should be largely
sufficient for the domain ontology. For new predicates, preference should be
given to express them by means of process classes rather than as new ad hoc
object properties (reification).
● The interpretation of the meaning of classes and object properties should be
clear and understandable.
We checked the two ontologies against these quality criteria (Sect. 4.1), from
which we then derived principles for redesign. The two ontologies have then been
redesigned accordingly while preserving all entities (Sect. 4.2). The resulting artefacts
are then assessed against the questions stated in section 1 (Sect. 5).
4. Results
4.1. Quality analysis
A positive point of PIZZA is the availability of an up-to-date, extensive and
didactically optimized tutorial. We found, however, the following shortcomings:
● No reference to any foundational ontology.
● The top-level bipartition into the classes labelled “Domain concepts” and
“Value partitions” seems to be purely navigational, its ontological significance
remains unclear.
● Use of non-rigid classes [10], e.g. P:Food.
● Extensional class definitions: P:Country defined as having exactly five
members, which is objectively wrong.
● Idiosyncratic object properties, with their meaning restricted to the Pizza
domain, partly unclear such as P:hasCountryOfOrigin.
● Naming lacks precision, e.g. P:TabascoPepperSauce is surprisingly a
descendent of P:PizzaTopping, because it means topping with tabasco pepper.
In the WINE&FOOD ontology, we found the following shortcomings:
● No reference to any foundational ontology.
● Very domain-specific top-level partition into consumable and non-
consumables, regions, vintages, wineries and wine descriptors.
● Idiosyncratic object properties: e.g. highly domain-specific as in PIZZA.
● Numerous potentially ambiguous labels, e.g. W:Loire intended to mean wine
from the Loire region and not the river Loire.
● Unprincipled instance/class division: W:Chianti is a class, whereas
W:ChiantiClassico is an individual.
● Extensional definitions, e.g. W:WineSugar defined as {W:Dry, W:OffDry,
W:Sweet}.
● The ontology is completely devoid of metadata.
● In the tutorial [2], numerous references still point to the old Protégé frames
version, using frame terminology, like “concept”, “slot” etc.
4.2. Redesign
Applying the recommendations of the GoodOD guideline, we refined the two
educational ontologies into the re-modelled counterparts PIZZA+ and WINE&FOOD+,
with the namespace identifiers “P+” and “W+”. The new ontologies import the upper-
level ontology BioTopLite2 (BTL2, namespace “btl2”) [11]. Accordingly, in PIZZA+,
P+:Food is a subclass of btl2:PolyMolecularCompositeEntity. Since an instance of this
class is required to have clear unity and identity criteria [10], we changed its name to
“FoodItem”. The class is subclass of the top-level class btl2:MaterialObject, defined as
having one mass and one volume at a time. Also, the object properties of BTL2 are
intended to be exhaustive. In accordance with the GoodOD criteria we strived to fully
express the meaning of the PIZZA+ and WINE&FOOD+ axioms by using exclusively
BTL2 object properties.
4.2.1. PIZZA+
The re-implementation of PIZZA under BTL2 required numerous changes. First, we
replaced all ontology-specific object properties by BTL2 object properties, e.g.
P:hasTopping by btl2:hasComponentPart, a non-transitive subproperty of
btl2:hasPart, which relates components with a compound. Components strictly
partition the compound, and the compound is the mereological sum of its components.
A loss of some component affects the integrity of the compound and can change the
type it instantiates; e.g., it can change from a complete to a defective organism. The
relation btl2:isBearerOf (inverse: btl2:inheresIn) relates realizable entities (qualities,
roles, functions, dispositions, or information objects) with the physical entity they
depend on. In BTL2, general localization is expressed by the object property
btl2:includes (inverse btl2:isIncludedIn). It is transitive and relates a place with an
entity which occurs, inheres, or is part of it. E.g., the original PIZZA included the
following closure axioms:
P:AmericanPizza subClassOf P:NamedPizza and P:hasTopping only
(P:MozzarellaTopping or P:PeperoniSausageTopping or P:TomatoTopping)
P:AmericanPizza subClassOf P:NamedPizza and
P:hasTopping some P:MozzarellaTopping and
P:hasTopping some P:PeperoniSausageTopping and
P:hasTopping some P:TomatoTopping
These axioms were transformed into PIZZA+ axioms by using only BTL2 object
properties:
P+:AmericanPizza subClassOf P+:NamedPizza and
(btl2:hasComponentPart only (P+:MozzarellaTopping or
P+:PeperoniSausageTopping or P+:TomatoTopping or P+:PizzaBase)) and
(btl2:hasComponentPart some P+:TomatoTopping) and
(btl2:hasComponentPart some P+:MozzarellaTopping) and
(btl2:hasComponentPart some P+:PeperoniSausageTopping)
We had to add some classes that were not included in the original ontologies in order to
replace old ad hoc object properties by more precise constructs. The object property
P:hasCountryOfOrigin had remained undefined in PIZZA. Common sense suggests
that P:hasCountryOfOrigin is not meant to relate an individual pizza with the country
where it was produced. In contrast to the wine and fruit, pizzas are not shipped around
between countries. Therefore, we assume that an P+:AmericanPizza is a P+:Pizza that
has been produced according to a recipe which was created in America. This leads us to
create a class P+:Recipe, which is a btl2:Plan and therefore a btl2:InformationObject.
btl2:Plan represents a thing in which several targeted steps (processes) are to be
performed to reach a planned goal. A btl2:Plan can only be realized by some
btl2:Process. It is a piece of information that exists independently of a particular
material carrier. P+:Recipe has the subclass P+:PizzaRecipe with following definition:
P+:PizzaRecipe isEquivalentTo P+:Recipe and (btl2:hasRealization only
(btl2:Action and (btl2:hasOutcome some P+:Pizza)))
In BTL2 an action is a process that has an agent [12]. Preparing food or creating a
recipe should therefore be placed under the class btl2:Action:
btl2:Action isEquivalentTo btl2:Process and btl2:hasAgent some owl:Thing
Accordingly:
P+:PreparingFoodAction subClassOf btl2:Action and btl2:hasOutcome some P+:Food
P+:PreparingPizza EquivalentTo
P+:PreparingFoodAction and btl2:hasOutcome some P+:Pizza
P+:AmericanPizzaRecipe EquivalentTo P+:PizzaRecipe and (btl2:isOutcomeOf some
(P+:CreatingRecipe and (btl2:isIncludedIn value P+:NorthAmerica)))
By these means we can redefine P+:AmericanPizza as follows:
P+:AmericanPizza EquivalentTo P+:Pizza and
btl2:hasComponentPart only (P+:MozzarellaTopping or
P+:PeperoniSausageTopping or P+:PizzaBase or P+:TomatoTopping) and
btl2:hasComponentPart some P+:MozzarellaTopping and
btl2:hasComponentPart some P+:PeperoniSausageTopping and
btl2:hasComponentPart some P+:TomatoTopping and
btl2:isOutcomeOf some
(P+:PreparingPizza and (btl2:isRealizationOf some P+:AmericanPizzaRecipe))
The class P+:Spiciness in PIZZA+ describes a value partition for the classes P+:Hot,
P+:Medium or P+:Mild. It is a btl2:ObjectQuality with the superclass btl2:Quality.
4.2.2 WINE&FOOD+
To redesign WINE&FOOD under BTL2, we aligned its class structure to BTL2 and
replaced the WINE&FOOD object properties by BTL2 ones. E.g., the relations that
indicate the qualities of a wine, viz. W:hasBody, W:hasColor, W:hasFlavor and
W:hasSugar (in the sense of having a sweet flavour) were replaced with
btl2:isBearerOf. Furthermore, new labels were added to several
W+:AnimalOrganismPart classes to avoid ambiguity in an out-of-context situation. The
class W+:ConsumableThing with the subclasses W+:EdibleThing, W+:Meal,
W+:MealCourse, W+:PotableLiquid were defined as subclasses of
btl2:PolyMolecularCompositeEntity.
In WINE&FOOD some classes were subsumed by W:EdibleThing, e.g., W:Fowl,
W:Meat and W:Seafood. The re-modelling requires changes in view of the
classification, e.g., the classes W+:Fowl, W+:Meat and W+:Seafood are now subclasses
of both W+:AnimalOrganismPart and W+:EdibleThing, the latter being defined as
follows:
W+:EdibleThing subClassOf W+:ConsumableThing and
(btl2:isBearerOf some (btl2:Disposition and
(btl2:hasRealization only W+:BeingEatenByHumans)))
In order to distinguish between countable and mass entities, W:Fruit was re-labelled
W+:FruitUnit to denote a countable thing; also its classification was changed:
W+:FruitUnit subClassOf btl2:PolyMolecularCompositeEntity
Not all fruits are edible, therefore we added:
W+:EdibleFruitUnit equivalentTo W+:EdibleThing and W+:FruitUnit
W+:NonSweetFruitUnit subClassOf W+:EdibleFruitUnit
W+:SweetFruitUnit subClassOf W+:EdibleFruitUnit
W+:MixedFruitUnit subClassOf W+:EdibleFruitUnit
W:WineDescriptor is re-modelled as subclass of btl2:Quality: W+:WineDescriptor with
the subclasses W+:WineColor and W+:WineTaste :
W+:WineDescriptor subclassOf btl2:inheresIn some W+:Wine
W+:WineDescriptor subclassOf btl2:inheresIn only W+:Wine
The object property W:madeFromGrape was dropped and reified by a new subclass
of btl2:Action, viz. W+:WineMaking:, a class representing the process of which wine is
an outcome:
W+:WineMaking isEquivalentTo btl2:Action and
(btl2:hasOutcome some W+:Wine) and btl2:hasPatient some W+:Grape)
W :Wine subClassOf (btl2:isOutcomeOf some W+:WineMaking)
+
The meaning of W:madeFromFruit was represented similarly by
W+:FruitJuiceMaking, defined as a subclass of btl2:Action:
W+:FruitJuiceMaking isEquivalentTo btl2:Action and
(btl2:hasOutcome some W+:FruitJuice) and (btl2:hasPatient some W+:Fruit)
Hence:
W+:FruitJuice isEquivalentTo W+:PotableLiquid and
btl2:isOutcomeOf some W+:FruitJuiceMaking
Individuals like W:CabernetFrancGrape, W:GamayGrape, W:MalbecGrape,
etc. are now typed as W+:WineGrape, whereas geographical regions are represented as
classes like W+:AlsaceRegion, W+:AustralianRegion. The underlying definitions are of
the following type:
W+:AlsaceRegion isEquivalentTo W+:GeographicRegion and
btl2:isIncludedIn value W+:Alsace
Wine attributes like W:Red, W:Rose, W:Full, W:Delicate, W:Dry, etc. are
classes in W+ and descendants of btl2:Quality.
5. Discussion
The first aim of this paper was to evaluate the two popular educational ontologies
PIZZA and WINE&FOOD with respect to common quality criteria. We have found
that the two ontologies were not designed for interoperability and did not make any
effort to align their classes with any foundational ontology.
Whereas the PIZZA creators took care in good documentation, which partly
elucidates the design decisions taken, WINE&FOOD reflects a pure computer-science
approach towards ontologies as knowledge-representation devices for certain purposes,
reflecting the notion of ontologies as “conceptualisations” [13], which characterised the
discourse in the 1990s. This is concretised by ontology specialists’ recommendation
that the decision “class or instance” is just a matter of convenience [2], to be driven by
what the application requires. This postmodern flavour was then heavily attacked by
proponents of “reality representation” like Barry Smith [14], who also were fierce
advocates of foundational ontologies. In the meanwhile, this controversy has cooled
down, mainly because interoperability-driven standardisation gained more importance
in Applied Ontology, which prohibits overly idiosyncratic approaches anyway. The
creation of BTL2 and the development of GoodOD were driven by the pragmatic
motivation to simplify ontology construction, predominantly in the realm of biology
and medicine. This is also the reason for its underlying naïve realism, which set it in
close proximity to the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and the OBO Relation Ontology
(RO).
Second, though PIZZA and WINE&FOOD fared badly in this evaluation, we
found that they can be re-designed such that their content is aligned with a pre-existing
foundational ontology. Our redesigned ontologies demonstrate a successful proof of
concept for such a redesign. In particular, the inventory of object properties contained
in BTL2 proved to be sufficient for the domains covered. Idiosyncratic object
properties in the source ontologies could be either replaced by existing BTL2 ones, or
reconstructed by introducing reifying process classes. A considerable benefit of the
avoidance of introducing new primitive object properties is the need to re-think the
meaning of ambiguous and possibly fuzzy predicates like hasCountryOfOrigin, an
object property that has turned out to have different meanings when applied to pizzas
and to wines, respectively, which requires a thorough elucidation exceeding the
expressivity of a single binary OWL object property.
Thirdly, we intended to compare the educational value of the original and
redesigned ontologies. PIZZA and WINE&FOOD describe material things, their
constitution, qualities and processes they are involved in. In the terms of Karl Popper
[15], these are “first-world” entities for which there is a large consensus that a realistic
approach is adequate. Due to everyone’s familiarity with food, this subject matter
constitutes an easy and straightforward entry point to ontology engineering for a broad
range of learners. Domains that require to model mental, social, or legal entities would
spark more controversy about upper-level divisions, provide less clear criteria for
distinguishing between individuals and repeatables, and would therefore not be well
served by a foundational ontology like BTL2.
Regarding the two main learning objectives of (i) mastering OWL and description
logics, on the one hand, and (ii) understanding foundational ontologies, on the other
hand, the answers are clearly split. In the original Manchester tutorial for PIZZA, the
focus was set (besides developing skills in using Protégé) on understanding the whole
breadth of description logics including all technical intricacies connected with
automated reasoning. This scope is clearly narrowed down by our redesigned PIZZA
and WINE&FOOD ontologies, because the very point of using a highly constraining
foundational ontology like BTL2 is to limit modellers’ degrees of freedom. This means
for instance, that the manipulation of the “R-Box”, i.e., the creation and customisation
of object properties, with their algebraic features, hierarchies, domain and range
restrictions and CGIs is no longer admissible (nor necessary, as long as the premise
holds that all necessary ontological relations are already provided by the upper-level
ontology).
On the other hand, with PIZZA+ and WINE&FOOD+ the ontology engineers’
curriculum now includes an in-depth understanding of a foundational ontology. This
prevents naïve modelling decisions such as introducing ad hoc primitives like
hasCountryOfOrigin. An ontologically proper representation of such predications is,
however, not trivial and requires at least as many in-depth skills and knowledge in
Formal Ontology as logic knowledge is needed for mastering the syntax and semantics
of the representational language.
Taken singly as well in combination, these ontologies can be applied for
educational purposes, accompanied by a new tutorial which follows a clear educational
strategy: After an introduction to tools (editor, reasoner), language, upper-level
ontology and naming conventions, the modelling tasks are guided by textual
characterisations of the entities and their relationships. This could be performed in two
parallel groups, one working on the pizza domain and one working on the wine
domain. The curriculum can then be concluded by a fusion of these two ontologies,
demonstrating the interoperability of the two ontologies and thus proving the value of
principled ontology design for interoperability of separately created ontology artefacts.
6. Conclusion
The educational ontologies PIZZA and WINE&FOOD have been widely used to teach
ontology methods and tools. However, the two ontologies have remained largely
unchanged for many years, despite increasing awareness of foundational principles
(GoodOD) for good ontology design. Recognizing that the two popular educational
ontologies PIZZA and WINE&FOOD were lagging behind design principles and do
not commit to any foundational ontology, we analyzed and re-designed them by
adhering to upper level ontology constraints provided by the foundation ontology
BTL2. As a result, the redesign required clarifying the ontological commitment of the
PIZZA and WINE&FOOD classes by assigning them to top-level ontology classes.
The ongoing redesign effort4 is expected to yield a harmonized combined
PIZZA&WINE&FOOD+ ontology.
As much as we acknowledge the value of educational ontologies, especially of the
well-documented PIZZA, we are convinced that the education of ontologists must not
be limited to training in the use of tools and the understanding of their logical
foundations. Foundational ontologies ought to play a central role in the future of
Applied Ontology as an engineering discipline; and this needs to be addressed by
appropriate educational ontologies. The redesigned PIZZA+ and WINE&FOOD+ might
be a first step in this direction. A detailed investigation of the reasoning results of the
original and redesigned ontologies, their assessment against competency questions as
well as benchmarking with common DL reasoners will be described elsewhere.
4
Documented in the GitHub repository: http://purl.org/biotop
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