Ontologies in Support of Problem Solving

Problem-solving methods are ready-made software components that can be assembled with domain knowledge bases to create application systems. Ontologies and problem-solving methods have a long history of intricate relationships. In this chapter, we describe these relationships and how they can be used in a principled manner to construct knowledge systems. We have developed a methodology that strongly relies on ontologies: first, to describe domain knowledge bases and problem-solving methods as independent components that can be reused in different application systems; and second, to mediate knowledge between the two kinds of components when they are assembled in a specific system. We present our methodology and a set of associated tools (based on the Protégé knowledge-engineering environment) that we have created to support developers in building knowledge systems and that we have used to conduct problem-solving method reuse experiments.