Excellent post, Steve! Many thanks.
Recently, I've came across a good recipe against Ontology Fever condition (which, by the way, has a cousin strain in the XML Schema world, too). It's on the last slide of the presentation named Ontology Engineering by Dr. Jeremy Rogers from the University of Manchester (http://www.co-ode.org/resources/tutorials/intro/slides/OntologyEngineering.p...). It was part of the GUID-1 workshop homework. I copy it here:
- Ontologies are conceptualisation of domains for use on computers TO DO SOME TASK(S): Always ask “What’s it for?” - Perfection and completeness will seduce you. Only build what’s useful.
Sorry, I don't want to disturb the original discussion thread. Carry on.
Cheers,
Ricardo
Steven Perry wrote:
Additionally there is the temptation with RDF to catch what I call Ontology Fever. In terminal cases, this disease results in an obsession with using OWL Full to model the entire universe reductively at the level of the laws of physics. Any distributed data network afflicted by this disease is destined to die.