  Ontologies are key enablers for sharing precise and machine-understandable
semantics among different applications and parties. Yet, for ontologies to meet
these expectations, their quality must be of a good standard. The quality of an
ontology is strongly based on the design method employed. This paper addresses
the design problems related to the modelling of ontologies, with specific
concentration on the issues related to the quality of the conceptualisations
produced. The paper aims to demonstrate the impact of the modelling paradigm
adopted on the quality of ontological models and, consequently, the potential
impact that such a decision can have in relation to the development of software
applications. To this aim, an ontology that is conceptualised based on the
Object-Role Modelling (ORM) approach (a representative of endurantism) is
re-engineered into a one modelled on the basis of the Object Paradigm (OP) (a
representative of perdurantism). Next, the two ontologies are analytically
compared using the specified criteria. The conducted comparison highlights that
using the OP for ontology conceptualisation can provide more expressive,
reusable, objective and temporal ontologies than those conceptualised on the
basis of the ORM approach.
