Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 2nd Edition

Common Modeling Errors

In light of the AAA slogan (Anybody can say Anything about Any topic), we can’t say that anything is really a modeling error. In our experience teaching modeling to scientists, engineers, content managers, and project managers, we have come across a handful of modeling practices that may be counterproductive for the reuse goals of a semantic model. We can’t say that the models are strictly erroneous, but we can say that they do not accomplish the desired goals of sharing information about a structured domain with other stakeholders.

We have seen each of the antipatterns described in the following in a number of models. Here, we describe each one in turn and outline its drawbacks in terms of the modeling guidelines just ...