1. Mike Bennett FOIS – JOWO Cape Town, South Africa September 2018
Hypercube Ltd.
Conceptual Ontology Engineering Tutorial Session 4: Top Level Ontologies
Mike Bennett
FOIS – JOWO
Cape Town, South Africa
September 2018

2. Session 4: Top Level Ontology Partitioning Deep Dives
Contextually defined things
‘Relatives’
Things that happen versus things that just are
‘Continuant’ and ‘Occurrent’
‘Endurant’ and ‘Perdurant’

3. Business Rationale for Context in Ontology

4. Context-dependent data stores
Business Entity
Integration issues arise from:
perspective / context
terminology mismatch …
CRM1
CRM2
CRM3
CRMn
Integration issues

5. Context-dependent data stores
Bank perspective on Customer
pers. view
pers. view
pers. view
pers. view
Business Entity
Integration issues arise from:
perspective / context
terminology mismatch …
CRM1
CRM2
CRM3
CRMn
Integration issues

6. … What is the Context? Bank Legal Person There are various points
at which the bank
interacts with a given
person (customer for
various products) …
CRM1
CRM2
CRM3
CRMn
Legal Person

7. Contextual and Non-contextual Data

8. Aligning Business Glossary and Data Elements
Analysis of a representative set of terms in a bank business glossary and accompanying data dictionary. Terms like ‘Country’ are defined in the context in which they are used, for example country of domicile, risk etc. Meanwhile data elements need the context of class, class hierarchy in data models to determine semantics.
ONTOLOGY
Contexts:
Time
Role / Relationship
Records / history
etc.
Business concept context
Data element context
Business Glossary
Data Model
trace
Country
A self-governing geopolitical unit that is recognized as a country by the United Nations
Country of Incorporation
This term refers to country in which a corporation is legally registered for operations. This term is applicable to corporate entities only.
XYZ: Registered Address Country
Country of Birth
The country which customer documentation identifies as country of birth of the customer. This term refers to individuals only.
PQR: Customer Birth place
Country of Residence
The country where the customer declared he / she resides . This attribute refers to individuals only.
PQR: Customer Domicile Country Code
Domicile Country
This term refers to the country where the company operates for its primary operations. This term is applicable to corporate entities only
XYZ: Customer Domicile Country Code
Country Code
This is a 2-3 digit standard used to refer to a country, where the code is applicable to county of birth, county of residence, etc.
ISO 3166 Country Code
Country of Risk
This term refers to the country of risk for a customer's exposure with the Bank. This may be related to the currency of transaction or to location of a transaction or payee. This is applicable to corporations of individuals.
XYZ: Customer Risk Country Code
PQR: Customer Collateral Country Code
Business Glossary Details

9. Customer Relationships Current State
To make data reusable the contexts implicit in application siloes must be made explicit. Consider a set of applications for relationships between the bank and some party. Each silo combines relationship-specific data, entity data and historical records of the product or loan application.
Bank
Data Siloes
CRM2
CRM1
CRMn
There are various points at which the bank interacts with a given person (customer for various products)
First name
Family name
Customer ID
Drawdown date
Credit rating
Address
Country of Birth
Full name
Customer ID
Purchase date
Phone
Address Line 1 …
City
Country
Name
Customer ID
Date of Birth
Purchase date
Phone
Address Line 1 …
Country of Collateral
Legal Person

10. Customer Relationships Data: Future State
The Ontology makes implicit contexts explicit. It provides contextual semantics, distinguishing concepts specific to relationships, historical records (e.g. loan applications), current information for entities, and others. This is independent of the deployment benefits of semantic technology.
FIBO ONTOLOGY
Contexts:
Time
Role / Relationship
Records / history
etc.
Purchase
date
Current
date
Ontology provides the context for each kind of data
Relationship (context) specific data
Customer ID
Purchase history
Contact Phone
Customer ID
Drawdown date
Payment history
Customer ID
Purchase date
Country of collateral
Full name
Customer ID
Purchase date
Application Credit rating
Phone
Address Line 1 …
City
Country of Domicile
Non context specific data becomes real-time entity data
Entity Data
Address
Records: Loan application data
First name
Family name
Current Credit rating
Date of Birth
Home Phone
Country of Birth
Address Line 1 ..
Address line n
City
State
Country
Independent entity data

11. Approaches to Context Context as a Class Kinds of Context
Mediating Thing partition
Kinds of Context
Who What When Where hoW
Why?
Everything as Context

12. Context as a Class Mediating Thing partition Independent Thing
Identified by properties intrinsic to the thing
Properties that do not depend on context
Relative Thing
Identified by properties of the thing in a given context
Mediating Thing is the context
Leads to a hierarchy of kinds of context

13. Thermopylae

14. Greeks

15. Persians
Depiction of the "Susian guards" from the Palace of Darius I in Susa. Their garments match the description of the Immortals by ancient authors.

16. Persian Immortals
The Immortals (from the Greek Ἀθάνατοι Athánatoi) also known as the Persian Immortals or Persian Warriors was the name given by Herodotus to an elite heavily-armed infantry unit of 10,000 soldiers in the army of the Achaemenid Empire. This force performed the dual roles of both Imperial Guard and standing army. The force consisted mainly of Persians, but also included Medes and Elamites. 
The Immortals played an important role in Cambyses II's conquest of Egypt in 525 BC and Darius I's invasion of India's smaller western frontier kingdoms (western Punjab and Sindh, now in Pakistan) and Scythia in 520 BC and 513 BC. Immortals participated in the Battle of Thermopylae 480 BC and were amongst the Persian occupation troops in Greece in 479 BC under Mardonius.[2]

17. The Persian Immortal Greeks Persian Immortal Thermopylae Darius Adam
Xerxes Pahlavi
Etc. etc.

18. Relatively Defined Entity
The Persian Immortal
Viewer
Relatively Defined Entity
Context
Greeks
Persian Immortal
Thermopylae
played by
played by
played by
Darius Adam
Xerxes Pahlavi
Etc. etc.
Independent Entities

19. Found on Facebook…

20. What to do about that Tomato?
Tomato as a thing
As a thing, it’s a kind of fruit
Tomato as something you put in a salad
As a salad ingredient you would put it in a green salad not a fruit salad
Salad as a Thing
A salad is a dish made by combining ingredients without further processing (cooking etc.) after you’ve combined them
Ingredients may be prepared beforehand e.g. by chopping, or they may not
Ingredients are ingredients – that’s a concept too!

21. Salad ingredients Salad Ingredient Salad Fruit salad ingredient
Green salad
Mixed salad
has
Salad Ingredient
Fruit salad ingredient
Green salad ingredient

22. Green Salad Ingredient
Tomato in Salad
Fruit
Salad
Is a
Is a
Tomato
Green Salad
Takes the form of
may be used as
has ingredient
Green Salad Ingredient

23. Mixing it Up
Pizza and Wine ontologies are fine tuned for the application
Suppose we want to talk about food and drink more generally?
How would these work together?
Example application:
I haz cheeze
What can I do with it?

24. The Language of Food
Cheese is starting to appear in more than one place
Cheese topping on the pizza
Cheese salad
We may also anticipate future uses of our food language to talk about burgers, garlic bread and so on
Grapes feature in wine and may also appear in some salad
Are we any closer to not putting that tomato in the fruit salad?

25. Generalization and Abstraction
A thought experiment:
What sort of Thing is Pizza base?
What sort of Thing is Cheese Topping?
What sort of thing is Pinot Gris?
What sort of thing is 2007?
What sort of thing is the Napa Valley?
A Thought Experiment
What sort of thing is lettuce?
What sort of thing is broccoli?
What sort of thing is cheese?
What sort of thing is a tomato?

26. Ontological Analysis: 2 Questions
What sort of thing is this?
What distinguishes it from other things?

27. Ontological Analysis: 2 Questions
What sort of thing is this?
Gives a “Taxonomy” of things ordered by type
What distinguishes it from other things?
Extends the taxonomy to an “Ontology”
Things in a classification hierarchy, distinguished by properties

28. Thinking about Meanings
There is a distinction between cheese used as a topping and cheese as cheese
How do we deal with this?
Let’s start simple:
What sort of thing is “cheese topping”?
It’s a topping
What sort of thing is a topping?
It’s an ingredient
So cheese topping is a kind of ingredient, that is something which forms one of the constituents of some prepared dish

29. The Ancients… “All that is in Heaven and Earth…”
… falls into one of three “buckets” or top level categories:
A thing in itself
A thing defined with reference to some specific context
The context which allows us to define something in (2)

30. The Ancients… “All that is in Heaven and Earth…”
… falls into one of three “buckets” or top level categories:
A thing in itself
Foodstuff e.g. cheese, grape
A thing defined with reference to some specific context
Ingredient e.g. topping, varietal
The context which allows us to define something in (2)
Recipe

31. The Contextual Partitions
Independent Thing
Relative Thing
Mediating Thing

32. The Contextual Lattice
Independent Thing
The Thing in Itself
Relative Thing
Something defined specifically to some context e.g. role
Mediating Thing
The context which brings independent things together in some role or function

33. The Contextual Lattice
Independent Thing
The Thing in Itself
Person, cheese, tomato, grape, business
Relative Thing
Something defined specifically to some context e.g. role
Customer, ingredient, Contract party
Mediating Thing
The context which brings independent things together in some role or function
Sales, salad, contractual agreement

34. This requires careful thought…
Let’s think about some examples
Pizza: toppings tend to be simple foodstuffs
The fact they are listed in the context of a pizza is only clear from the context itself;
Wine: The word “varietal” clearly defines a kind of grape in the context of a given wine
So that’s easy. Varietal gives us a convenient label for kinds of grape used in the making of a given wine
This sits in a separate taxonomic hierarchy to kinds of grape
Concord is a grape and pinot noir is a grape
Pinot noir is also the name of a varietal that is a grape as used in the making of some wine

35. Labels and Meanings
Lesson: the labels won’t always match our neat scheme
We need to keep a clear head about the intended meanings of something which might have the same label as something under a different partition
Especially when the available data assumes a knowledge of the application context
Context isn’t automatically communicated to the computer
Sometimes (as in varietal) there will be some common label to help us
Labeling: we can make this easier to follow by appending the name varietal” after the grape name
PinotNoirVarietal, CarmenereVarietal
Even if the available data is not labeled this way, use it as a mental exercise to determine which partition you are talking about

36. Taking this to Cheese
Cheese topping is a kind of topping which is a kind of ingredient
Blue cheese topping is a kind of cheese topping
Cheese is a kind of dairy product
Blue cheese is a kind of cheese
By putting the topping into the Relative Thing partition we can distinguish these
The labels won’t always help
Blue cheese as a kind of cheese
Blue Cheese as a kind of cheese topping
Blue Cheese as a kind of salad dressing
Labeling may help: append the parent label (“Topping”) to concepts in that partition i.e. SomethingTopping
Do this in the data as well if you can
If not, say it out loud and see if still means what you thought it meant!

37. What does the Data Look Like?
What would be an example piece of instance data for a “Relative Thing”?
We tend to think of data in terms of independent things. However
Some data sources are implicitly describing the relative thing anyway
For example a customer database has “Customer”
This is like “Varietal” – the label makes the contextual use clear
Test is whether the data includes properties which are specific to that thing only as used in that context
Salami as an independent thing may or may not be sliced
Salami as a pizza topping is sliced precisely because it is to be used as a pizza topping;
This is a fact about the ingredient of salami in the context of its use as a pizza topping

38. What does the Data Look Like? Wine
A set of example data for wine might be easy. It may include terms like:
Estate: Williams Estate
Region: Napa Valley
Varietal: Pinot Noir
Vintage: 2007
Here the varietal refers to a grape specifically in terms of its use in wine – so you can map this data directly to the Relative Thing
So is Vintage – it’s not just a year it’s the year of that wine’s production
Wine mostly has labels which describe relative things
Other data might now
Remember: labels don’t determine the meaning, the partitions do!

39. The Test for Relativity
Data created for a single application e.g. customer data, may combine assertions about a class both as thing in itself and in the context of the application
Customer Given Name
Customer Contact for Correspondence
For each assertion:
Does this apply to the thing regardless of the context?
Name, address, company registration number
Does this apply to the thing in the specific business context only
Contact for correspondence (about this product)
Credit history / payment history with supplier

40. How to Tag Data Semantically
It is not so much a matter of looking for data which is instance data of some relative thing
Rather, it’s case of determining, for the data which you have, how to tag it semantically
For each item of data which is available, ask whether it is framed in the context of some identifiable Mediating Thing, or if it’s a fact about the thing as a whole
Some data sources may not have made this distinction so you may end up tagging different bits of data as being independent versus relative things
There is unlikely to be data about the Mediating Thing. Rather this is likely to be the name of the application or use case

41. Touching Base What we have so far: What about Mediating Thing?
You can cross reference between different contexts more effectively if the things which are defined in a context specific way are arranged in a separate partition called Relative Thing
Relative things include ingredients (e.g. of pizza and other food); constituents / ingredients of wine, of salad and so on
They also include things like parties to an agreement, the actor who performs some role, the vendor or supplier in a customer / supplier relationship and so on.
You need to tag the data semantically according to what it really means, not simply as some kind of Independent Thing
Sometimes the existing data element labels are a clue, sometimes you have to think about it
What about Mediating Thing?

42. What about Mediating Thing?
This requires more careful thought
What is the context that brings pizza base and pizza topping together into a pizza?
The Pizza?
But pizza is an Independent Thing? You can buy it, sell it, poke it with a stick, eat it and so on
It can itself perform some role e.g. as part of a feast, as stock and so on.
So what then is the Mediating Thing?
This would be the Pizza Recipe.
The recipe brings two or more independent things together
Pizza Base: a kind of bread;
Various chopped or grated things e.g. Salami, cheeses, broccoli etc.
When these are brought together into the context of the pizza recipe, they perform the roles of base or topping
The Pizza is an independent thing produced by this process

43. Pizza Mediating Thing This is the recipe.
A recipe brings together kinds of thing, which are referred to in the context of the recipe, as ingredients
The ingredients have recipe-specific properties, like how thinly they are sliced, which do not apply to the thing in and of itself
If the label “Ingredient” sounds sensible appended to the name of some foodstuff, it’s a relative thing
This is defined in the context of “Recipe”
In the context of a recipe we call something an ingredient
Without a recipe there can be no ingredients

44. Winemaking
Winemaking brings various things together and carries out various processes
Fermentation is a process (also a thing-in-itself, a temporal one)
Grape is a thing-in-itself
Varietal is the grape as used in this process to make this wine
Terroir is the land in which these grapes have been grown
Vintage is the year in which this wine was bottled
Estate is the (independent) place which acted in the role of producer of this wine (winemaker versus location) So
Winemaking is the Mediating Thing
The various components are independent things
The definitions of those items as being components or aspects of wine are the Relative Things.

45. Wine Mediating Thing Winemaking is the Mediating Thing for wine
Grapes have a label which specifically identifies the Relative Things, namely Varietal
Other independent things also have winemaking-specific labels
Terroir, Estate, Vintage, are relative things
Defined in terms of roles played by soil, real estate and even time itself.
Again these words only make sense and take these meanings in the context of winemaking

46. Tomato
Knowledge is knowing that Tomato is part of the taxonomy of things that are a fruit
Salad is a combination of ingredients which have undergone no further processing other than to be combined and maybe chopped
Salad Ingredient is something which you have put into that salad
Fruit Salad has salad ingredients which are all kinds of fruit, except tomato and chili
Green salad has salad ingredients which may be drawn from a variety of sources (including tomato)
Mixed salads may include walnuts, grapes, tomatoes, cheese and so on. It’s up to you.
Wisdom is defining the rules about what kinds of foodstuff can be used in the role defined for one or another kind of ingredient.
Some flowers or their petals can also serve as a salad ingredient

47. Why does Any of This Matter?
If you can distinguish between something defined according to some specific role, and that thing in and of itself, then
You have a common language which a be raged across a broad range of subject matter;
The taxonomy is greatly simplified:
Instead of having lots of separate kinds of subclasses for lots of to different functions, you have a simple taxonomy
Things are taxonomized only according to their intrinsic properties
There is a separate taxonomy of things as defined in some context
The imposition of Relative Thing and Mediating Thing seem to add complexity, but they take this complexity away from the taxonomy
This requires imagination and thought to implement correctly

48. Why Relative Thing matters
The Relative Things have a use when there are things you want to say about something which are only about its application in some specific context
Customer: who is the in house contact who handles this customer
Ingredient -> Pizza topping: how thinly do I slice it?
Varietal: when is it harvested, what are the characteristics it imbues the wine with?
None of those are facts about a kind of grape in and of itself

49. More Mediating Things This requires imagination Examples will help:
The Mediating Thing for Pizza was the Recipe
The Mediating Thing for Wine was Winemaking
What is the mediating thing for contracts and contract parties?
What is the mediating thing for the registered address of a company?

50. Addresses
One can refer to an address in terms of its function as follows:
Delivery Address
Mailing address
Headquarters address
Registered Address
Each of these can be seen as a thing in a role – the independent thing being some street address e.g. 333 Market Street, and the role being delivery etc.

51. Address Mediating Thing
What is the Mediating Thing for each of these?
Delivery of Goods (“Goods Inward” or loading bay location)
Delivery of mail (by post office or couriers)
Where the company has its head office; management of the company
Registered address –not so simple…
In law, the Registered Address of a company is where you can serve papers on that entity for legal proceedings
This relates to the fact that they are a Legal Person.

52. Registered Address Context
There will always be some meaningful context in which to define the Relative Thing (if there is a real Relative Thing in play).
So find it.
DO NOT come up with some artificial sounding label e.g. “Registration Context”
Think about it: what is it in which some kinds of entity are required to register a Registered Address?
Whatever that is will be your Mediating Thing

53. Company Registration
What actually happens in the world is that when a given kind of Legal Person is formally registered, several legal requirements come into play:
One of these is the legal requirement to provide an address at which papers may be served upon the Legal Person.
This is the registered address
The specific properties of these may vary from one jurisdiction to another
for example in South Africa one may use a PO Box while in most jurisdictions this is expressly forbidden.
So the Mediating Thing is “Company Registration”
This has a number of specific properties, which vary from one jurisdiction to another
Other kinds of address occur in the contexts of delivery, correspondence, corporate management etc.

54. Financial Industry Contexts Overview
EDM-Council/FIBO Foundations Content Team

55. Other Context Treatments
What else can be the kind of thing that is the context for some contextually determined thing (Relative Thing)?
Roles (of a thing or person)
Function
Phases
Status

56. Modeling Treatments
The ‘Contextually Defined Thing’ may be modeled in several ways:
Simple partitions (Sowa KR Lattice)
Rigid v non rigid sortals (OntoUML)
Role + layer (GFO
Dependent Continuant (BFO)
And others
The conceptual challenge remains the same but the modeling details may differ
Key question: What do the ‘Individuals’ look like?

57. Individuals: KR Lattice Partitions
Individual of type ‘Relative Thing’
E.g. Wells Fargo as Lender to Joe Bloggs
Individual types both as independent and relative thing
Wells Fargo is Institution AND Lender

58. OntoUML / SMIF: Roles
Roles define what something is for or how it behaves in a certain context, not “what it is”. A “relative thing”
A role is a <<Facet Of>> what it can be a role of.
An entity can play any number of roles and these roles may change over time.
Roles can be contextual and specialize other roles
Roles are usually established by relationships
2/5/2019
Threat & Risk

59. Phases
Phases (or states) are classifications of objects over their lifetime. A “Relative thing”
Examples: Child, Teenager, Adult or Invoiced, Late, Paid
May be combined with other types using unions and intersection (e.g. teenage driver)
2/5/2019
Threat & Risk

60. Independent: John as a Person
Pilots License
has a
Status
has status
Current
John has a pilot’s license
John has sufficient flying hours logged to be current
John (as a instance of an Independent Thing) is a pilot

61. Customer Relationships Current State
To make data reusable the contexts implicit in application siloes must be made explicit. Consider a set of applications for relationships between the bank and some party. Each silo combines relationship-specific data, entity data and historical records of the product or loan application.
Bank
Data Siloes
CRM2
CRM1
CRMn
There are various points at which the bank interacts with a given person (customer for various products)
First name
Family name
Customer ID
Drawdown date
Credit rating
Address
Country of Birth
Full name
Customer ID
Purchase date
Phone
Address Line 1 …
City
Country
Name
Customer ID
Date of Birth
Purchase date
Phone
Address Line 1 …
Country of Collateral
Legal Person

62. Customer Relationships Data: Future State
The Ontology makes implicit contexts explicit. It provides contextual semantics, distinguishing concepts specific to relationships, historical records (e.g. loan applications), current information for entities, and others. This is independent of the deployment benefits of semantic technology.
FIBO ONTOLOGY
Contexts:
Time
Role / Relationship
Records / history
etc.
Purchase
date
Current
date
Ontology provides the context for each kind of data
Relationship (context) specific data
Customer ID
Purchase history
Contact Phone
Customer ID
Drawdown date
Payment history
Customer ID
Purchase date
Country of collateral
Full name
Customer ID
Purchase date
Application Credit rating
Phone
Address Line 1 …
City
Country of Domicile
Non context specific data becomes real-time entity data
Entity Data
Address
Records: Loan application data
First name
Family name
Current Credit rating
Date of Birth
Home Phone
Country of Birth
Address Line 1 ..
Address line n
City
State
Country
Independent entity data

63. Things that Happen

64. Continuants and Occurrents.
Continuants correspond largely to physical bodies, objects, and particular masses of matter, while occurrents correspond to events, processes, and - perhaps - momentary states. Here, I employ the following distinction:
a continuant is constructed as a spatial entity that has all its parts at an instant t, and no spatial parts at any other instant
an occurrent is constructed as a temporal entity that has only one part, or that has sequential temporal parts.

65. Kinds of Occurrents Binary Event
Dynamic invariants (predicates over pairs of states)
Ends (BMM for states)
Plan (prescriptive)
Executed Plan
Process (prescriptive)
Milestone

66. Endurants and perdurants
In contemporary theories of persistence, a persisting entity either endures by having all its parts at any instant; or perdures by having parts at sequential instants. More generally,
an endurant has no temporal parts (or, at least, no conceptually distinguishable temporal parts) and thus exists in its entirety at each instant of its existence
a perdurant has temporal parts, and is at least temporally extended.

67. DOLCE

68. Events (SEP)

69. Events (sorted) Remember: these are not the labels we will use
Ontology is about the concepts

70. Something which happens
Occurrent things
Occurrent thing
Something which happens
(at some time)
Definitive Occurrent
Occurrence
Process Definition
Instant, Purposeful
Ongoing, Purposeful
State
Definition of what should happen (repeatable)

71. Processes and Plans Definitive occurrent things
Describing what should happen versus what did happen

72. Definitive Occurrent Occurrent thing Something which really happens
(at some time)
Definitive Occurrent
Definition of what should happen
(repeatable)
Descriptive Occurrent
Prescriptive Occurrent
Historic Occurrent
Predictive Occurrent
Process Definition
Plan
Method

73. Other Occurrent Facets
Heterogeneous
Homogeneous
Occurrent Thing
Culminating Occurrent
Non Culminating Occurrent
Definitive Occurrent
Descriptive Occurrent
Prescriptive Occurrent
Historic Occurrent
Predictive Occurrent
Process Definition
Plan

74. More Occurrent Facets Occurrent Thing Heterogeneous Homogeneous
Culminating Occurrent
Non Culminating Occurrent
State
PurposefulOccurrent
Non Purposeful Occurrent
Instantaneous Occurrent
Ongoing Occurrent

75. Working Definitions Continuant: Occurrent:
Definition: “something which exists and retains its identity across points in time”
Explanatory Note: These persist over time even when their constituents alter over time
Occurrent:
Definition: “something which is defined wholly with reference to time or which consists of one or more things which are defined wholly with reference to time”
Explanatory Note: These are extended in time and so are only partly present at any time in which they exist

76. Occurrent Things Facets
Homogeneous / Heterogeneous
Continuous / has parts
Culminating / non culminating
Is the end of something / is ongoing
Duration / no duration
Ongoing / instant
Telic / Atelic
With or without some purpose or intention
Random / Intentional
Causes unknown / caused by agent
Prescriptive / Descriptive
What should happen / what happened

77. In English Homogeneous / Heterogeneous Culminating / non culminating
Continuous / has parts
Culminating / non culminating
Is the end of something / is ongoing
Duration / no duration
Ongoing / instant
Telic / Atelic
With or without some purpose or intention
Random (stochastic) / Intentional
Causes unknown / caused by agent
Prescriptive / Descriptive
What should happen / what happened
Dynamic and non dynamic
Some of the other facets apply only to dynamic occurrents

78. The Facets Homogeneous / Heterogeneous Culminating / Not Culminating
Continuous / has parts
Culminating / Not Culminating
Is the end of something / is ongoing
Duration / No Duration
Ongoing / instant
Functional / Non Functional (formerly Telic / Atelic)
With or without some function (regardless of whether there’s an intending agent)
Intended / Not Intended
caused by agent / Causes unknown
Prescriptive / Descriptive
What should happen / what happened
What about hypothetical things and thing that could happen
Not in the model just yet:
Dynamic and Non Dynamic [State?]
Some of the other facets apply only to dynamic occurrents
Future conditions effected by other events
Deterministic / Not Deterministic
Exogenous events in risk analysis – probabilistic / stochastic KEEP THIS

79. Facet: *geneous

80. Facet: Culminating

81. Facet: Prescriptive/Descriptive

82. Facet: Functional and Purposeful

83. Facet: Discrete / Continuous

84. Occurrents Taxonomy

85. Occurrent Facets – CCM View

86. What is State?
There are two concepts often referenced by the word “State”
The state something is in
E.g. being red, being in default
Per State Transition Diagrams
This is occurrent
The state itself
The state of redness, the state of default
This is a continuant thing
It is also abstract (does not have concrete members in the world)

87. What is State?

88. Why does this Matter?
Frame concepts which have a temporal component which are of interest to the business
Events, activities
States
Statuses, prices, other time-variant concepts
Provide a basis for ontological modelling of business process
This brings the two sides of development (structural and behavioural) into the same conceptual model
© Hypercube 2015

89. Other Labels for Occurrents
Binary Event / State transition
Dynamic invariants (predicates over pairs of states)
Ends (BMM for states)
Plan (prescriptive)
Executed Plan
Process (prescriptive)
Milestone

90. Treatments Ontology scoping
Perspective on the ontology or its application
Pragmatics
Selection of upper ontology partitions
Most appropriate
Best of breed
Best match to usage (realist v idealist etc.)
What else?

91. Lifecycle

92. Process

93. Questions?
Next: Putting it to work