Investigating the use of background knowledge for assessing the relevance of statements to an ontology in ontology evolution

The tasks of learning and enriching ontologies with new concepts and relations have attracted a lot of attention in the research community, leading to a number of tools facilitating the process of building and updating ontologies. These tools often discover new elements of information to be included in the considered ontology from external data sources such as text documents or databases, transforming these elements into ontology compatible statements or axioms. While some techniques are used to make sure that statements to be added are compatible with the ontology (e.g. through conflict detection), such tools generally pay little attention to the relevance of the statement in question. It is either assumed that any statement extracted from a data source is relevant, or that the user will assess whether a statement adds value to the ontology. In this paper, we investigate the use of background knowledge about the context where statements appear to assess their relevance. We devise a methodology to extract such a context from ontologies available online, to map it to the considered ontology and to visualize this mapping in a way that allows to study the intersection and complementarity of the two sources of knowledge. By applying this methodology on several examples, we identified an initial set of patterns giving strong indications concerning the relevance of a statement, as well as interesting issues to be considered when applying such techniques

requirements and use cases

In this report, we introduce our initial vision of the Corporate Semantic Web as the next step in the broad field of Semantic Web research. We identify requirements of the corporate environment and gaps between current approaches to tackle problems facing ontology engineering, semantic collaboration, and semantic search. Each of these pillars will yield innovative methods and tools during the project runtime until 2013. Corporate ontology engineering will improve the facilitation of agile ontology engineering to lessen the costs of ontology development and, especially, maintenance. Corporate semantic collaboration focuses the human-centered aspects of knowledge management in corporate contexts. Corporate semantic search is settled on the highest application level of the three research areas and at that point it is a representative for applications working on and with the appropriately represented and delivered background knowledge. We propose an initial layout for an integrative architecture of a Corporate Semantic Web provided by these three core pillars

The role of ontologies in creating and maintaining corporate knowledge: a case study from the aero industry

The Designers’ Workbench is a system, developed to support designers in large organizations, such as Rolls-Royce, by making sure that the design is consistent with the specification for the particular design as well as with the company’s design rule book(s). The evolving design is described against a jet engine ontology. Currently, to capture the constraint information, a domain expert (design engineer) has to work with a knowledge engineer to identify the constraints, and it is then the task of the knowledge engineer to encode these into the Workbench’s knowledge base (KB). This is an error prone and time consuming task. It is highly desirable to relieve the knowledge engineer of this task, and so we have developed a tool, ConEditor+ that enables domain experts themselves to capture and maintain these constraints. The tool allows the user to combine selected entities from the domain ontology with keywords and operators of a constraint language to form a constraint expression. Further, we hypothesize that to apply constraints appropriately, it is necessary to understand the context in which each constraint is applicable. We refer to this as “application conditions”. We show that an explicit representation of application conditions, in a machine interpretable format, along with the constraints and the domain ontology can be used to support the verification and maintenance of constraints

Drawing OWL 2 ontologies with Eddy the editor

In this paper we introduce Eddy, a new open-source tool for the graphical editing of OWL~2 ontologies. Eddy is specifically designed for creating ontologies in Graphol, a completely visual ontology language that is equivalent to OWL~2. Thus, in Eddy ontologies are easily drawn as diagrams, rather than written as sets of formulas, as commonly happens in popular ontology design and engineering environments. This makes Eddy particularly suited for usage by people who are more familiar with diagramatic languages for conceptual modeling rather than with typical ontology formalisms, as is often required in non-academic and industrial contexts. Eddy provides intuitive functionalities for specifying Graphol diagrams, guarantees their syntactic correctness, and allows for exporting them in standard OWL 2 syntax. A user evaluation study we conducted shows that Eddy is perceived as an easy and intuitive tool for ontology specification

A methodology for designing layered ontology structures

Semantic ontologies represent the knowledge from different domains, which is used as a knowledge base by intelligent agents. The creation of ontologies by different developers leads to heterogeneous ontologies, which hampers the interoperability between knowledge-based applications. This interoperability is achieved through global ontologies, which provide a common domain representation. Global ontologies must provide a balance of reusability-usability to minimise the ontology effort in different applications. To achieve this balance, ontology design methodologies focus on designing layered ontologies that classify into abstraction layers the domain knowledge relevant to many applications and the knowledge relevant to specific applications. During the design of the layered ontology structure, the domain knowledge classification is performed from scratch by domain experts and ontology engineers in collaboration with application stakeholders. Hence, the design of reusable and usable ontologies in complex domains takes a significant effort. Software Product Line (SPL) design techniques can be applied to facilitate the domain knowledge classification by analysing the knowledge similarities/differences of existing ontologies. In this context, this thesis aims to define new methodological guidelines to design layered ontology structures that enable to classify the domain knowledge taking as reference existing ontologies, and to apply these guidelines to enable the development of reusable and usable ontologies in complex domains. The MODDALS methodology guides the design of layered ontology structures for reusable and usable ontologies. It brings together SPL engineering techniques and ontology design techniques to enable the classification of the domain knowledge by exploiting the knowledge similarities/differences of existing ontologies. MODDALS eases the design of the layered ontology structure. The MODDALS methodology was evaluated by applying it to design the layered structure of a reusable and usable global ontology for the energy domain. The designed layered structure was taken as reference to develop the ontology. The resulting ontology simplifies the ontology reuse process in different applications. In particular, it reduced the average ontology reuse time by 0.5 and 1.2 person-hours in in two different applications in comparison with a global energy ontology which does not follow a layered structure.Ontologia semantikoak datu domeinu ezberdinen ezagutza irudikatzen dute, agente adimendunek jakintza oinarri bezala erabiltzen dutena. Ontologiak ingeniari desberdinek garatzen dituzte eta heterogeneoak dira, aplikazioen arteko komunikazioa oztopatuz. Komunikazio hau ontologia globalen bidez lortzen da, domeinuaren errepresentazio komun bat ematen baitute. Ontologia globalek berrerabilgarritasunerabilgarritasun oreka eman behar dute aplikazio desberdinetan berrerabiltzeko ahalegina murrizteko. Horretarako, ontologia diseinu metodologiek aplikazio askok erabiltzen duten eta aplikazio zehatzetarako garrantzitsua den ezagutza abstrakzio geruzetan sailkatzea proposatzen dute. Geruza egituraren diseinuan zehar, domeinuko adituek eta ontologiako ingeniariek hutsetik sailkatzen dute jakintza, domeinu konplexuetan ontologia berrerabilgarriak eta erabilgarrien diseinu ahalegina areagotuz. Software produktu lerroak diseinatzeko erabiltzen diren teknikak jakintza sailkatzea erraztu ahal dute, ontologien ezagutza antzekotasunak edo desberdintasunak aztertuz. Testuinguru honetan, honakoa da tesiaren helburua: ezagutza garatutako ontologien arabera sailkatzen duen ontologia berrerabilgarri eta erabilgarrien geruza egitura diseinatzeko metodologia bat garatzea; baita metodologia aplikatu ere, ontologia berrerabilgarri eta erabilgarriak domeinu konplexuetan garatu ahal izateko. MODDALS metodologiak ontologia berrerabilgarri eta erabilgarrien abstrakzio geruzak nola diseinatu azaltzen du. MODDALS-ek software produktu lerro eta ontologia diseinu teknikak aplikatzen ditu ezagutza garatuta dauden ontologien antzekotasunen/desberdintasunen arabera sailkatzeko. Planteamendu honek geruza egitura diseinua errazten du. MODDALS ebaluatu da energia domeinurako ontologia berrerabilgarri eta erabilgarri baten egitura diseinatzeko aplikatuz. Diseinatutako geruza egitura erreferentzia gisa hartu da ontologia gartzeko. Egitura onekin, garatutako ontologia berrerabiltzea errazten du aplikazio desberdinetan. Konkretuki, garatutako ontologiak berrerabilpen denbora 0.5 eta 1.2 pertsona-orduetan murriztu du bi aplikazioetan; geruza egitura jarraitzen ez duen ontologia batekin alderatuz.Las ontologías semánticas representan el conocimiento de diferentes dominios, utilizado como base de conocimiento por agentes inteligentes. Las ontologías son desarrolladas por diferentes ingenieros y son heterogéneas, afectando a la interoperabilidad entre aplicaciones. Esta interoperabilidad se logra mediante ontologías globales que proporcionan una representación común del dominio, las cuales deben proporcionar un balance de reusabilidad-usabilidad para minimizar el esfuerzo de reutilización en diferentes aplicaciones. Para lograr este balance, las metodologías de diseño de ontologías proponen clasificar en capas de abstracción el conocimiento del dominio común a muchas aplicaciones y el que es relevante para aplicaciones específicas. Durante el diseño de la estructura de capas, el conocimiento se clasifica partiendo de cero por expertos del dominio e ingenieros de ontologías. Por lo tanto, el diseño de ontologías reusables y usables en dominios complejos requiere un gran esfuerzo. Las técnicas de diseño de líneas de producto de software pueden facilitar la clasificación del conocimiento analizando las similitudes/diferencias de conocimiento de ontologías existentes. En este contexto, el objetivo de la tesis es crear una metodología de diseño de la estructura de capas para ontologías que permita clasificar el conocimiento tomando como referencia ontologías existentes, y aplicar esta metodología para poder desarrollar ontologías reusables y usables en dominios complejos. La metodología MODDALS explica cómo diseñar estructuras de capas para ontologías reusables y usables. MODDALS adopta técnicas de diseño de líneas de producto en combinación con técnicas de diseño de ontologías para clasificar el conocimiento basándose en las similitudes/diferencias de ontologías existentes. Este enfoque facilita el diseño de la estructura de capas de la ontología. La metodología MODDALS se ha evaluado aplicándola para diseñar la estructura de capas de una ontología global reusable y usable para el dominio de la energía. La estructura de capas diseñada se ha tomado como referencia para desarrollar la ontología. Con esta estructura, la ontología resultante simplifica la reutilización de ontologías en diferentes aplicaciones. En concreto, la ontología redujo el tiempo de reutilización en 0.5 y 1.2 personas-hora en dos aplicaciones respecto a una ontología global que no sigue una estructura por capas

An Automated System for the Assessment and Ranking of Domain Ontologies

As the number of intelligent software applications and the number of semantic websites continue to expand, ontologies are needed to formalize shared terms. Often it is necessary to either find a previously used ontology for a particular purpose, or to develop a new one to meet a specific need. Because of the challenge involved in creating a new ontology from scratch, the latter option is often preferable. The ability of a user to select an appropriate, high-quality domain ontology from a set of available options would be most useful in knowledge engineering and in developing intelligent applications. Being able to assess an ontology\u27s quality and suitability is also important when an ontology is developed from the beginning. These capabilities, however, require good quality assessment mechanisms as well as automated support when there are a large number of ontologies from which to make a selection. This thesis provides an in-depth analysis of the current research in domain ontology evaluation, including the development of a taxonomy to categorize the numerous directions the research has taken. Based on the lessons learned from the literature review, an approach to the automatic assessment of domain ontologies is selected and a suite of ontology quality assessment metrics grounded in semiotic theory is presented. The metrics are implemented in a Domain Ontology Rating System (DoORS), which is made available as an open source web application. An additional framework is developed that would incorporate this rating system as part of a larger system to find ontology libraries on the web, retrieve ontologies from them, and assess them to select the best ontology for a particular task. An empirical evaluation in four phases shows the usefulness of the work, including a more stringent evaluation of the metrics that assess how well an ontology fits its domain and how well an ontology is regarded within its community of users

Modularity Canvas – A Framework for Visualizing Potentials of Service Modularity

Service modularity has been proposed as a possible solution to the dilemma between the customer-driven thirst for individualization and the standardization ambitions of service providers. However, current modularization methods that intend to support the corresponding transformation process remain mostly on a conceptual level with little real-life application. Therefore, we develop the Modularity Canvas – a generic framework for the structured information capturing and identification of potentials for advancing towards a modular service architecture. The artifact is developed following the Design Science Research Methodology. The results include the artifact itself and first insights from five demonstration workshops at industrial service providers from contract logistics, wind energy and automotive engineering sectors. The contribution of the paper lies in the deeper understanding of what dimensions need to be considered when preparing service providers for their move towards a modular service architecture

prototypical implementations

In this technical report, we present prototypical implementations of innovative tools and methods developed according to the working plan outlined in Technical Report TR-B-09-05 [23]. We present an ontology modularization and integration framework and the SVoNt server, the server-side end of an SVN- based versioning system for ontologies in the Corporate Ontology Engineering pillar. For the Corporate Semantic Collaboration pillar, we present the prototypical implementation of a light-weight ontology editor for non-experts and an ontology based expert finder system. For the Corporate Semantic Search pillar, we present a prototype for algorithmic extraction of relations in folksonomies, a tool for trend detection using a semantic analyzer, a tool for automatic classification of web documents using Hidden Markov models, a personalized semantic recommender for multimedia content, and a semantic search assistant developed in co-operation with the Museumsportal Berlin. The prototypes complete the next milestone on the path to an integral Cor- porate Semantic Web architecture based on the three pillars Corporate Ontol- ogy Engineering, Corporate Semantic Collaboration, and Corporate Semantic Search, as envisioned in [23]

Network of Ontologies – A Systematic Mapping Study and Challenges Comparison

Background: Network of ontologies is the pairwise match of a set of ontologies, which became recently relevant due to its applicability in different domains, such as cultural evolution. However, the challenges faced in this area are not completely known and understood, neither are their relations to ontology matching counterpart problems . Aims: The goal of this paper is to identify challenges and applications of a network of ontologies and compare them to the 8 existing challenges of ontology matching [8]. Research questions are: (i) Which are the challenges for a Network of Ontologies? (ii) What are the applications of a Network of Ontologies? Method: We defined and executed a systematic mapping review protocol. A specialist on systematic mapping review and ontology research evaluated protocol and results. Results: Out of the 67 relevant studies, 10 addressed the research questions. All of them presented challenges, but only four presented applications. Conclusions: We identified four new challenges and related them with the eight challenges presented in [8]