Situating domain ontologies in a general, long-term, diachronic information technology framework helps us to understand better their role in the evolution of information. This perspective provides some innovative insights into how they should be built.

This presentation shows a foundational ontology that aims to underpin a range of enterprise systems in a consistent and coherent manner and takes data-driven re-engineering as its natural starting point for domain ontology building. It has two closely intertwined components, a foundational ontology and a re-engineering methodology.

The origin and predominant area of application has been the enterprise. Suitability has been demonstrated in many industrial projects across a range of business domains including finance, oil and gas, and defense.