What are the Common Core Ontologies?
The Common Core Ontologies, usually shortened to CCO, are a suite of eleven ontologies that provide generic terms and relations reflecting entities found across many domains. Rather than describe one narrow field, they capture the categories that keep recurring: persons, organisations, artifacts, events, information, qualities and units.
A mid-level suite
Ontologies are often described in three tiers. A top-level ontology gives domain-neutral categories. A domain ontology gives the specialised terms of a single field. Between them sits the mid-level, and that is where CCO lives. It is specific enough to be useful yet general enough to be shared.
What is inside
The eleven ontologies cover agents, artifacts, events, facilities, geospatial regions, information entities, qualities, time, units of measure, currency units and the extended relations that connect them. Loaded together through the AllCoreOntology module, they form a single navigable graph.
Where to look next
The repository index lists every class and relation with its definition. A good place to start is the Information Content Entity branch, which shows how descriptions, directives and designators are told apart.
Keep reading
How CCO builds on Basic Formal Ontology
CCO does not invent its top categories. It specialises the domain-neutral distinctions of BFO. Here is how that works.
Using CCO for data interoperability
Shared meaning is the hard part of joining datasets. A common mid-level ontology is one durable way to get it.