The TOVE project ("Toronto Virtual Enterprise") is a project to develop an ontological framework for

enterprise integration Enterprise integration is a technical field of enterprise architecture, which is focused on the study of topics such as system interconnection, electronic data interchange, product data exchange and distributed computing environments. It is a c ...

(EI) based on and suited for

enterprise modeling Enterprise modelling is the abstract representation, description and definition of the structure, processes, information and resources of an identifiable business, government body, or other large organization. It deals with the process of unders ...

.Terje Totland (1997)
5.2.3 Toronto Virtual Enterprise (TOVE)
Thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim. In the beginning of the 1990s it was initiated by Mark S. Fox and others at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institu ...

. Mark S. Fox and

Michael Gruninger Michael Gruninger is a Canadian computer scientist and Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, known for his work on Ontologies in information science. particularly with the Process Specification Language, and in enterp ...

(1998)
Enterprise Modeling
. American Association for Artificial Intelligence.

Overview

The original goal of the project was fourfold:Fox, M.S., (1992),
The TOVE Project: Towards A Common-sense Model of the Enterprise
, Enterprise Integration Laboratory Technical Report. * Create a shared representation or

ontology In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities ...

of the enterprise that each agent in the distributed enterprise can jointly understand and use * Define the meaning of each

description Description is the pattern of narrative development that aims to make vivid a place, object, character, or group. Description is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as ''modes of discourse''), along with exposition, argumentation, and na ...

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and compu ...

* Implement the semantics in a set of

axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy o ...

s that will enable TOVE to automatically deduce the answer to many "common sense" questions about the

enterprise Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to: Business and economics Brands and enterprises * Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company * Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company * Enterprise ...

, and * Define a

symbology A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...

for depicting a concept in a graphical context Eventually the ongoing project aims to develop a set of integrated ontologies for the modelling of both commercial and public enterprises. The model according to

Ted Williams Theodore Samuel Williams (August 30, 1918 – July 5, 2002) was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played his entire 19-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career, primarily as a left fielder, for the Boston Red Sox from 193 ...

(2000) is "multi-level, spanning conceptual, generic and applications layers. The generic and applications layers all also stratified and composed of micro theories spanning, for example, activities, time, resources, constraints, etc. At the generic level. Critical to the TOVE effort is enabling the easy instantiation of the model for a particular enterprise TOVE models will be automatically created as a by product of the enterprise design function".

(2000
TOVE Toronto Virtual Enterprise
at pera.net. Accessed July 29, 2009. At the turn of the millennium TOVE has been used to model a computer manufacturer and an aerospace engineering firm. The TOVE enterprise models is presented by Fox et al. (1995) as second generation

knowledge engineering Knowledge engineering (KE) refers to all technical, scientific and social aspects involved in building, maintaining and using knowledge-based systems. Background Expert systems One of the first examples of an expert system was MYCIN, an appl ...

approach. A first generation knowledge engineering approach "is extracting rules from experts, while second generation is

ontology engineering In computer science, information science and systems engineering, ontology engineering is a field which studies the methods and methodologies for building ontologies, which encompasses a representation, formal naming and definition of the categ ...

: They develop comprehensive ontologies for all the aspects of an organization they find necessary (necessity is decided based on competency requirements to the model, i.e., what are the questions the model will have to answer, either by ordinary look-up or by deduction). The background of TOVE is clearly knowledge engineering and to some degree Computer Integrated Manufacturing".

References

External links

Project page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tove Project Ontology (information science) Enterprise modelling

Overview

References

Further reading

External links