This is the same principle as database normalisation (Colomb, 2005).
Minimal encoding bias should exist so that the ontology is implemented at a knowledge
level not at the implementation level. As the ontology is for timber products
the units used for measuring the dimensions of the timber products, and how a
standard pack of timber for that organisation is quantified must be unambiguous.
For this ontology to avoid encoding bias a facility must be made for an organisation
to specify how the dimensions of the timber are measured and a reasoning tool be
used to show equivalence between how each organisation represents their timber.
This explicitly implies that the inner workings or implementation is not dictated but
left up to the user as long as the correct actions in the environment are produced
(Colomb, 2005; Gruber, 1993b).
The last quality concept specified by Gruber (1993b) is minimal ontological commitment.
Ontological commitment is the extent to which the agent must give up
autonomy in order to make their actions consistent with the ontology. Gruber states
that ontological commitment is the agreement to use the ontology in a manner
that demonstrates its actions are consistent with the definitions in the ontology.
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