A little while back a customer asked about the difference between DSM and ontologies, here's my opinion.
A Domain-Specific Modeling language has many things in common with an ontology: classes in a hierarchy, slots and rules about what values they can hold (including instances of other classes), and of course the ability to instantiate the resulting language/ontology. Creating a DSM language also has things in common with creating an ontology: domain analysis, bounding the domain, trade-offs between theoretical accuracy and practical usability, the importance of good names, etc.
However, ontologies and DSM languages differ in how and why they are used, at
least for a stereotypical case:
| |
Ontology |
DSM |
| Purpose: |
Describing something that exists |
Designing something that will be created
(often automatically from the instance) |
| Instantiation: |
Only once, either globally or once by each user |
Many times by each user, to create many different things |
| Querying: |
Often ask questions of the instances of an ontology, like querying a
database |
Rarely queried manually, but instead are often read by generators
that produce programs |
| Cf.: |
XML schema and instance |
Programming language grammar and programs |
| Creation UI: |
Tree view plus a property sheet;
no possibility for manual layout |
Graphical diagram, matrix or table;
layout made by creator of the instance |
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