Ontologies and Enterprise’s Information Modelling

This paper is designed to familiarize with the new fundamental concepts related to enterprise’s information modelling: ontology and REA model. The ontology require a new approach in accounting information systems because of limitation of existing systems on knowledge sharing and knowledge reuse, which makes the design and implementation of new systems time consuming and expensive. An important requirement for knowledge sharing and reuse is the existence of a common semantic infrastructure introduced by the REA (Resources-Events-Agents) model, originally proposed by McCarthy (1982) as a way to overcome limitations inherent in the traditional Double-Entry bookkeeping model, documented by Luca Paciolo in 1494.