Reading Response 11

Gruber 1995 - Ontologies as a Specification Mechanism

The first question I would have after reading over these two section's in Gruber's article is whether or not an ER diagram can be described as an ontology map? They seem very similar and while I have some experience in the field of ER diagrams in relation to databases I actually hadn't come across the word ontology (or maybe I have and just wasn't paying attention). Is there a difference between the two?

I'd be lying if I said that this particular reading wasn't very difficult for me to get through. It involves a lot of new terms that I've never seen or read about so I'm sitting here with more questions that responses. Another thing I was hoping to get a better understanding of was Gruber's comments about "The Knowledge Level" perspective. I guess I didn't completely understand the definition or the explanation that was given in terms of agents and actions.

If I had to give a definition of my own for ontologies it would probably be a representation of a set of concepts based on a certain topic and the relationships between those concepts. I hope that is right, or at least I'm on the right track.