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DSM

Ontologies and Domain-Specific Modeling

September 04, 2014 17:06:47 +0300 (EEST)

A little while back a customer asked about the difference between DSM and ontologies, here's my opinion.

A Domain-Specific Modeling language has many things in common with an ontology: classes in a hierarchy, slots and rules about what values they can hold (including instances of other classes), and of course the ability to instantiate the resulting language/ontology. Creating a DSM language also has things in common with creating an ontology: domain analysis, bounding the domain, trade-offs between theoretical accuracy and practical usability, the importance of good names, etc.

However, ontologies and DSM languages differ in how and why they are used, at least for a stereotypical case:

  Ontology DSM
Purpose: Describing something that exists Designing something that will be created
(often automatically from the instance)
Instantiation: Only once, either globally or once by each user Many times by each user, to create many different things
Querying: Often ask questions of the instances of an ontology, like querying a database Rarely queried manually, but instead are often read by generators that produce programs
Cf.: XML schema and instance Programming language grammar and programs
Creation UI: Tree view plus a property sheet;
no possibility for manual layout
Graphical diagram, matrix or table;
layout made by creator of the instance