Semantic Interoperability and Integration

Executive summar

Ontologies: Principles, methods and applications

This paper is intended to serve as a comprehensive introduction to the emerging field concerned with the design and use of ontologies. We observe that disparate backgrounds, languages, tools, and techniques are a major barrier to effective communication among people, organisations, and/or software systems. We show how the development and implementation of an explicit account of a shared understanding (i.e. an `ontology') in a given subject area, can improve such communication, which in turn, can give rise to greater reuse and sharing, inter-operability, and more reliable software. After motivating their need, we clarify just what ontologies are and what purposes they serve. We outline a methodology for developing and evaluating ontologies, first discussing informal techniques, concerning such issues as scoping, handling ambiguity, reaching agreement and producing de nitions. We then consider the bene ts of and describe, a more formal approach. We re-visit the scoping phase, and discuss the role of formal languages and techniques in the specification, implementation and evaluation of ontologies. Finally, we review the state of the art and practice in this emerging field

A Framework for Understanding and Classifying Ontology Applications

In this paper, we draw attention to common goals and supporting technologies of several relatively distinct communities to facilitate closer cooperation and faster progress. The common thread is the need for sharing the meaning of terms in a given domain, which is a central role of ontologies. The different communities include ontology research groups, software developers and standards organizations. Using a broad definition of `ontology', we show that much of the work being done by those communities may be viewed as practical applications of ontologies. To achieve this, we present a framework for understanding and classifying ontology applications. We identify three main categories of ontology applications: 1) neutral authoring, 2) common access to information, and 3) indexing for search. In each category, we identify specific ontology application scenarios. For each, we indicate their intended purpose, the role of the ontology, the supporting technologies and ..

Towards a Methodology for Building Ontologies

We outline some requirements for a comprehensive methodology for building ontologies, and review some important work that has been done in the area which could contribute to this goal. We describe our own experiences in constructing a significant ontology, emphasising the ontology capture phase. We first consider the very general issue of categorisation in modelling, and relate it to the process of ontology capture. We then describe the procedure that we used to identify the terms and produce definitions. We describe a successful way to handle ambiguous terms, which can be an enormous obstacle to reaching a shared understanding. Other important findings include: it may not be necessary to identify competency questions before building the ontology; the meta-ontology can be chosen after detailed text definitions are produced; defining terms which are 'cognitively basic' first can lead to less re-work. AIAI-TR-183 Page 1 of 13 1 Introduction Currently, a considerable body of experience..