Understanding, building and using ontologies

I defend here the thesis of the independence between domain knowledge and problem-solving knowledge, arguing against the dominance of the so-called ''inter action problem'' mentioned in a recent paper by Van Heijst, Schreiber and Wielinga to dispute the feasibility of a single domain ontology shared by a number of different applications. The main point is that reusability across multiple tasks or methods can and should be systematically pursued even when modelling knowledge related to a single task or method. Under this view, I discuss how the principles of formal ontology and ontological engineering can be used in the practice of knowledge engineering, focusing in particular on the interplay between general ontologies, method ontologies and application ontologies, and on the role of ontologies in the knowledge engineering process. I will then stress the role of domain analysis, often absent in current methodologies for the development of knowledge-based systems. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.