As a methodologist and software engineer, I’ve designed CASE tools that collect and impose organization on meta-data at all levels of detail. As a enterprise architect, I’ve worked in an environment that uses planning-level data.
In a planning context, you need a method for quickly characterizing the problem space at the enterprise level.
I’ve stumbled on to a way to do that.

1. Practical Ontology for
Enterprise Data Management
5 W's:
An enterprise needs to know
what data they own,
who uses it,
when it is updated,
where it is stored and used,
why it is useful.

2. Practical . . . Ontology
Practical Ontology
 Delivers value  What exists
 Easy to use  Relationships
Scope:
Enterprise – produces a set
of products and services
for a specific market / constituency

3. Simple Technique
The message
is the
feature.
Everything follows from that.

4. The message is the feature.

Generally, enterprise ITS organizations
spend most of their resources integrating
purchased components, not building them.

Business processes communicate
by sending messages.

If you analyze those messages,
you discover almost everything
about the data.

5. Three Kinds of Message
 Request – Response
: Work Order
Please deliver cake to customer.
 Question – Answer
: Query
What is order’s delivery-address?
 Publish – Subscribe
: Notice
Oven has reached preheat-temperature.

6. Request – Response :
 What = What action is requested?
(Write English sentence.)
 Who = Actor requesting, actor responding.
 Where = Components (are proxies for actors)
 When = Task Delegation / Hand-off
 Why = Business Process Workflow

7. Question – Answer :
 What:
 What is the question? (Write it in English)
 What is the expected form of the answer?
 Who = Client is asking System of Record
 Where = Components (proxies for actors)
 When and Why:
 Details needed for operation (task in workflow)
 Details aggregated into metrics

8. Publish – Subscribe :
 What = Business Event Fact (Write it in English)
 Who = Who publishes? Who needs to know?
 Where = Components that proxy for who.
 When = Other actor needs to know:
 Asset Changes
 Account Changes
 Outages
 Work started / completed / suspended
 Why = Audit / Tracking (Metric) / Trigger

9. Five Message H's: How . . .
 How often = frequency of message
 How fast = response time needed
 How long = record retention period
 How much = Mega / Giga / Tera / Peta – Bytes
 How do:
 How protected = encryption / access control
 How transported = infrastructure used
 How formatted = XSD / . . .

10. Message ==> Nouns ==>
1.Write the message out as a full sentence.
2.Underline the nouns.
3.Analyze the nouns: Each noun refers to . . .
 Entity: Identifiable / Countable
 Entity Attribute: Describes some entity.
 Attribute Categories: Example: Color Green
 Entity-Owned Collection: Set, Bag, or List of . . .
 Entity is defined by its supertypes and attributes

11. Entity Facts
 What is the operational meaning of a data record?
 Who
 . . . is entity custodian? (business process)
 . . . has access to which fields?
 Where is entity record? (system of record)
 When is the entity data changed? (life-cycle: business events)
 Why is it useful? (ROI / ROA)
 Clients that query
 Business metrics derived
 Compliance with rules / regulations / best practice

12. Message ==> Capability

Request – Response
==> Ability to provide a service / product

Question – Answer
==> Ability to interpret the query and answer it

Publish – Subscribe
==> Publisher is qualified observer
. . . (sufficient for an internal notice)
==> Publisher is authority for that event data
. . . (necessary for wider audience)

13. Capability ==> Function / Feature
 What capability?
 User Story / Use Case
 Given . . . When . . . Then . . .
 Who = Which business process provides?
 Where = Which application / component provides?

When = Business Process Task (business event)
that requires capability
 Why = Business benefit (faster / better / cheaper)

14. 
Structured English Notations
(natural language structured for processing)
 SQL – Data Description Language
 Interface Description Languages
 CORBA IDL
 Java Interface declaration / equivalent in language X
 Web Service Description Language (WSDL)
 Business Process / Workflow Description
 Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)
 Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)
 Miscellaneous XML
 XML Schema Document (XSD)
 Web Ontology Language (OWL)
 Resource Description Framework (RDF)
 ALICE (Chat-Bot NLP: translate queries to standard form)

15. Examples in Hum
• Hum is not a product. It is an experiment.
• Open source - written in Smalltalk.
• Examples to show basic concepts.
• Point is that you can do this kind of thing
using structured natural language
as the notation.
• 5x8 cards will work almost as well

16. Each of these statements
Plan Tree indicates a message.
Goal: <imperative statement>
Post-Condition: <assertion statement>
Preconditions:
• <assertion statement>
• <assertion statement>
Action:
• <role> : <imperative statement>

17. Plan Tree - Example
Goal: Bake a cake according to recipe.
Post-Condition: Cake is baked per recipe.
Preconditions:
• Oven is at preheat-temperature per recipe.
• Cake batter is in a prepared cake pan.
Action:
• Cook : Bake in oven for bake-time given in recipe.

18. Role-Action : Procedure
Role: <Role-Name>.
Action: <imperative statement>
• <imperative Statement>
• <role-name> : <imperative statement>
• If <condition>:
• ...
• ...

19. Role-Action : Example
Role: Cook.
Action: Bake in oven for bake-time given in recipe.
• Open the oven door.
• Place the pan in the oven.
• Close the oven door.
• Oven: Bake for the bake-time given in recipe.
Message delegates step to automated oven (role).

20. Noun Relations
Dictionary: <title indicates context>
• A <noun> is a <noun>.
• <noun> attributes include <noun>, . . .
• <noun> categories include <noun>, . . .
• <noun> contains a <collection> of <plural noun>.
• ...

21. Noun Relations - Example
Dictionary: Baker’s vocabulary.
• A mixing-bowl is a container.
• Recipe attributes include temperature, duration, . . .
• Cake-type categories include layer-cake, bunt-cake.
• Recipe contains a list of steps.
• A temperature is a measurement.
Yellow nouns above could be in a base vocabulary.

22. Base Vocabulary
Dictionary: Base vocabulary.
• A weight is a measure.
• Measure attributes include quantity, precision,
unit-of-measure, method.
• Unit-of-measure categories include Wh,VAh,V.
• Wh is shorthand for Watt-hours.
• ...
(Could be open source like OpenCyc.)

23. Dialogs and Use Cases
Dialog: <arbitrary title giving overview>.
Context: <name-of-context for disambiguation>.
(Vignette -- starts with a specific user statement)
• U: <user statement>
• S: <system response>
• <role> : <action statement>

24. Dialog - Example
Dialog: User authentication.
Context: New session.
U: [User arrives with cookie.]
S: Hello [user name]. What would you like to do?
Context: Expect user request.
U: I want to pay my bill.
S: Your balance is [user account balance].
Would you like to pay by credit card or PayPal?

25. Summary
• Enterprise ITS needs to know what data it owns
and who uses it, when, where, and why.
• Enterprise actors communicate with messages.
• By analyzing message nouns and context,
we discover ontology content.
• Structured English provides human readable
information that is also machine readable
once the nouns are identified.