Systems and Semantic Web,

In software engineering, the use of models and metamodel-ing approaches (e.g., MDA with MOF/UML) for purposes such as software design or software validation is an estab-lished practice. Ontologies constitute domain models for-malized using expressive logic languages for class definitions and rules. Hence, when seen from an abstract point of view, the two paradigms and their various technological spaces seem closely related. However, in the state-of-the-art re-search and practice the two technologies are just beginning to converge and the relationship between the two is still un-der exploration. In this paper, we give an outline of current ontology technologies, such as the Semantic Web standards for a Web Ontology Language (OWL). Then, we describe a domain analysis of the different technical spaces, explaining the features of the different paradigms. Eventually, we de-scribe some avenues for integrating various ontological tech-nical spaces into meta modeling technical spaces