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From Ontology to Enterprise View
How John Giles’ enterprise ontology connects to business-oriented logical data models
Summary
John Giles emphasized that enterprise modeling must begin with an enterprise ontology — a high-level view of essential business concepts and their relationships. This aligns perfectly with the idea of a Business-Oriented Logical Data Model (LDM): a model that reflects the business’s language and structures before any technical implementation.
In this article, I explore how Giles’ ontology concept fits into modern data practices and why it remains a cornerstone of my four-pillar methodology.
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Ontology as the Starting Point
In The Elephant in the Fridge, Giles argued that success in data architecture depends on starting with an enterprise ontology:
- A shared vocabulary of business concepts (e.g., Party, Product, Agreement, Event).
- A model that is business-facing, not technology-facing.
- A foundation that makes later design decisions easier and more consistent.
This ontology is not about technical storage or performance. It is about shared meaning across the enterprise.
