Ontologies–Description and Applications
Abstract
The word “ontology” has gained a good popularity within the AI community. Ontology is usually viewed as a high-level description，consisting of concepts that organize the upper parts of the knowledge base. However, meaning of the term “ontology” tends to be a bit vague, as the term is used in different ways. In this paper we will attempt to clarify the meaning of the ontology including the philosophical views and show why ontologies are useful and important. We will give an overview of ontology structures in several particular systems. A field proposed within ontological efforts, “ontological engineering”, will be also described. Usage of ontologies in several particular ways will be discussed. These include systems and ideas to support knowledge base sharing and reuse, both for computers and humans, ontology based communication in multi agent systems, applications of ontologies for natural language processing, applications in documents search and enrichment of knowledge bases, both particularly for the World Wide Web environment and construction of educational systems, particularly intelligent tutoring systems.


本體的描述和應用
摘要
本體（ontology）一詞在人工智能界已經有相當?shù)闹攘恕１倔w通常被認為是由概念所組成的高級描述，概念則是用來對知識庫進行組織的上層部分。然而，當“ontology”這個術語在不同的場合以不同方式加以應用時，其含義往往是有點兒含糊不清的。本文將力圖闡明本體的含義，包括哲學觀點上的含義，并指明為什么本體是很有用的，也是很重要的。我們將給出幾個特殊系統(tǒng)中的本體結構總體情況，并對“本體工程”這一最新被提議的研究領域加以闡述。本文還將討論本體的幾種特定的用法，包括支持人與計算機的知識庫共享與重用的系統(tǒng)和想法、多主體系統(tǒng)中基于本體的通信、本體在自然語言中的應用、本體在文本搜索和知識庫濃縮中的應用，同時包括在互聯(lián)網環(huán)境和教育系統(tǒng)中，特別是智能輔導系統(tǒng)。