AN ATTEMPT AT FORMULATION OF ONTOLOGY FOR TECHNOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE COMPRISED IN TECHNICAL STANDARDS

摘要

The principal function of technical standards is to facilitate exchange of information between various entities taking part in economic activities. Technical standards mainly comprise the basic knowledge from a specific field of technology. A condition for effective use of this knowledge is putting it in some order and creating mechanisms, which will enable searching for and finding of information. Ordering of knowledge is the task of ontology in the sense of information science. The authors' intention has been building of an ontology, which would enable access to a detailed knowledge comprised in the content of a standard and not only to a symbol used to designate this standard. This should enable designing of a knowledge exploration system solving the technological problems based on the data and rules recorded in numerous standards. The ontology will make basis for further development and extension of foundry knowledge using the results of scientific studies and practical experience. This article presents a concept and principles of ontology formulation for the needs of collecting the technological knowledge. In formulation of ontology the RDF (Resource Description Framework) language, used also as a tool for information representation in the resources of global network (WWW), is utilised. Some examples are given of how to record the knowledge comprised in ASTM standards according to the designed ontology along with examples of the rules used in search for information.