Ontology construction from online ontologies

One of the main hurdles towards a wide endorsement of ontologies is the high cost of constructing them. Reuse of existing ontologies offers a much cheaper alternative than building new ones from scratch, yet tools to support such reuse are still in their infancy. However, more ontologies are becoming available on the web, and online libraries for storing and indexing ontologies are increasing in number and demand. Search engines have also started to appear, to facilitate search and retrieval of online ontologies. This paper presents a fresh view on constructing ontologies automatically, by identifying, ranking, and merging fragments of online ontologies

Ontology Winnowing: A Case Study on the AKT Reference Ontology

Many ontologies are built for the main purpose of representing a domain, rather than to meet the requirements of a specific application. When applications and services are deployed over an ontology, it is sometimes the case that only few parts of the ontology are queried and used. Identifying which parts of an ontology are being used could useful for realising the necessary fragments of the ontology to run the applications. Such information could be used to winnow an ontology, i.e., simplifying or shrinking the ontology to smaller, more fit for purpose sizes. This paper presents a study on the use of the AKT Reference Ontology by a number of applications and services, and investigate the possibility of using this information to winnow that ontology

Engineering XML solutions using views

In industrial informatics, engineering data intensive Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) is a challenging task without abstraction and partitioning. Further, the introduction of semi-structured data (namely XML) and its rapid adaptation by the commercial and industrial systems increased the complexity for data engineering. Conversely, the introduction of OMG's MDA presents an interesting paradigm for EIS and system modelling, where a system is designed at a higher level of abstraction. This presents an interesting problem to investigate data engineering XML solutions under the MDA initiatives, where, models and framework requires higher level of abstraction. In this paper we investigate a view model that can provide layered design methodology for modelling data intensive XML solutions for EIS paradigm, with sufficient level of abstraction

XML views, part III: An UML based design methodology for XML views

Object-Oriented (OO) conceptual models have the power in describing and modelling real-world data semantics and their inter-relationships in a form that is precise and comprehensible to users. Today UML has established itself as the language of choice for modelling complex enterprises information systems (EIS) using OO techniques. Conversely, the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is fast emerging as the dominant standard for storing, describing and interchanging data among various enterprises systems and databases. With the introduction of XML Schema, which provides rich facilities for constraining and defining XML content, XML provides the ideal platform and the flexibility for capturing and representing complex enterprise data formats. Yet, UML provides insufficient modelling constructs for utilising XML schema based data description and constraints, while XML Schema lacks the ability to provide higher levels of abstraction (such as conceptual models) that are easily understood by humans. Therefore to enable efficient business application development of large-scale enterprise systems, we need UML like models with rich XML schema like semantics. To address such issue, in this paper, we proposed a generic, semantically rich view mechanism to conceptually model and design (using UML) XML domains to support data modelling of complex domains such as data warehousing and e-commerce systems. Our approach is based on UML and UML stereotypes to design and transform XML views

Semantic Modelling of e-Solutions Using a View Formalism with Conceptual and Logical Extensions

In industrial informatics, there exists a requirement to model and design views at a higher level of abstraction. Since the classical view definitions are only available at the query or instance level, modelling and maintaining such views for complex enterprise information systems (EIS) is a challenging task. Further, the introduction of semi-structured data (namely XML) and its rapid adaptation by the commercial and industrial systems increased the complexity for view design and specification. To address such and issue, in this paper we present; (a) a layered view model for XML, (b) a design methodology for such views and (c) some real-world industrial applications of the view model. The XML view formalism is defined at the conceptual level and the design methodology is based on the XML semantic (XSemantic) nets, a high-level object-oriented (OO) modelling language for XML domains

Modeling views in the layered view model for XML using UML

In data engineering, view formalisms are used to provide flexibility to users and user applications by allowing them to extract and elaborate data from the stored data sources. Conversely, since the introduction of Extensible Markup Language (XML), it is fast emerging as the dominant standard for storing, describing, and interchanging data among various web and heterogeneous data sources. In combination with XML Schema, XML provides rich facilities for defining and constraining user-defined data semantics and properties, a feature that is unique to XML. In this context, it is interesting to investigate traditional database features, such as view models and view design techniques for XML. However, traditional view formalisms are strongly coupled to the data language and its syntax, thus it proves to be a difficult task to support views in the case of semi-structured data models. Therefore, in this paper we propose a Layered View Model (LVM) for XML with conceptual and schemata extensions. Here our work is three-fold; first we propose an approach to separate the implementation and conceptual aspects of the views that provides a clear separation of concerns, thus, allowing analysis and design of views to be separated from their implementation. Secondly, we define representations to express and construct these views at the conceptual level. Thirdly, we define a view transformation methodology for XML views in the LVM, which carries out automated transformation to a view schema and a view query expression in an appropriate query language. Also, to validate and apply the LVM concepts, methods and transformations developed, we propose a view-driven application development framework with the flexibility to develop web and database applications for XML, at varying levels of abstraction

Winnowing ontologies based on application use

The requirements of specific applications and services are often over estimated when ontologies are reused or built. This sometimes results in many ontologies being too large for their intended purposes. It is not uncommon that when applications and services are deployed over an ontology, only a few parts of the ontology are queried and used. Identifying which parts of an ontology are being used could be helpful to winnow the ontology, i.e., simplify or shrink the ontology to smaller, more fit for purpose size. Some approaches to handle this problem have already been suggested in the literature. However, none of that work showed how ontology-based applications can be used in the ontology-resizing process, or how they might be affected by it. This paper presents a study on the use of the AKT Reference Ontology by a number of applications and services,and investigates the possibility of relying on this usage information to winnow that ontology

Modeling ontology views: An abstract view model for semantic web

The emergence of Semantic Web (SW) and the related technologies promise to make the web a meaningful experience. However, high level modelling, design and querying techniques proves to be a challenging task for organizations that are hoping to utilize the SW paradigm for their industrial applications. To address one such issue, in this paper, we propose an abstract view model with conceptual extensions for the SW. First we outline the view model, its properties and some modelling issues with the help of an industrial case study example. Then, we provide some discussions on constructing such views (at the conceptual level) using a set of operators. Later we provide a brief discussion on how such this view model can utilized in the MOVE [1] system, to design and construct materialized Ontology views to support Ontology extraction

Generating Application Ontologies from Reference Ontologies

The semantic web provides the possiblity of linking together large numbers of biomedical ontologies. Unfortunately, many of the biomedical ontologies that have been developed are domain-specific and do not share a common structure that will allow them to be easily combined. Reference ontologies provide the necessary ontological framework for linking together these smaller, specialized ontologies. We present extensions to the semantic web query language SparQL that will allow researchers to develop application ontologies that are derived from reference ontologies. We have modified the ARQ query processor to support subqueries, recursive subqueries, and Skolem functions for node creation. We demonstrate the utility of these extensions by deriving an application ontology from the Foundational Model of Anatomy