1. A method for creating a virtual personal assistant (“VPA”) computer application for a domain of interest, the method comprising, with a computing system: determining the domain of interest; accessing a computerized ontology defining a structure for representing knowledge relating to a plurality of domains including the domain of interest, each domain referring to a category of information and/or activities in relation to which the VPA computer application may conduct a conversational natural language dialog with a computing device user, the ontology having linked thereto a plurality of re-usable VPA components, each of the re-usable VPA components being accessible by an executable VPA engine to, during operation of the VPA, determine a likely intended goal of the computing device user based on a determined meaning of explicit and implicit conversational natural language input of the computing device user, execute a task on behalf of the computing device user, and/or generate a likely appropriate system output in response to the conversational natural language input; determining a data relationship between the domain of interest and at least a portion of the ontology; and suggesting a re-usable VPA component to use to create the VPA computer application for the domain of interest based on the data relationship between the domain of interest and the ontology.
1. A method for creating a virtual personal assistant (“VPA”) computer application for a domain of interest, the method comprising, with a computing system: determining the domain of interest; accessing a computerized ontology defining a structure for representing knowledge relating to a plurality of domains including the domain of interest, each domain referring to a category of information and/or activities in relation to which the VPA computer application may conduct a conversational natural language dialog with a computing device user, the ontology having linked thereto a plurality of re-usable VPA components, each of the re-usable VPA components being accessible by an executable VPA engine to, during operation of the VPA, determine a likely intended goal of the computing device user based on a determined meaning of explicit and implicit conversational natural language input of the computing device user, execute a task on behalf of the computing device user, and/or generate a likely appropriate system output in response to the conversational natural language input; determining a data relationship between the domain of interest and at least a portion of the ontology; and suggesting a re-usable VPA component to use to create the VPA computer application for the domain of interest based on the data relationship between the domain of interest and the ontology. 2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the ontology comprises an hierarchical structure of ontological concepts each representing a portion of the knowledge relating to the plurality of domains, the re-usable VPA component is linked with one of the ontological concepts in the hierarchical structure, the data relationship between the domain of interest and the ontology comprises a data relationship between the domain of interest and another of the ontological concepts in the hierarchical structure, and the method comprises identifying the re-usable VPA component in an automated fashion based on an inheritance relationship between the one of the ontological concepts and the other of the ontological concepts in the hierarchical structure.