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

Approaching OBDA Evolution through Mapping Repair

[No abstract available

Graphol: Ontology Representation through Diagrams

Abstract. In this paper we present Graphol, a novel language for the diagram-matic representation of Description Logic (DL) ontologies. Graphol is designed with the aim of offering a completely visual representation to the users (notably, no formulas need to be used in the diagrams), thus helping the understanding of people not skilled in logic. At the same time, it provides designers with simple mechanisms for ontology editing, which free them from having to write down complex textual syntax. Through Graphol we can specify SROIQ(D) ontolo-gies, thus our language essentially captures the OWL 2 standard. In this respect, we developed a basic software tool to translate Graphol ontologies realized with the yEd graph editor into OWL 2 functional syntax specifications. We conducted some initial user evaluation tests, involving designers skilled in conceptual or on-tology modeling and users without specific logic background. From these tests, we obtained promising results about the effectiveness of our language for both visualization and editing of ontologies.

Semantic Analysis of R2RML Mappings for Ontology-Based Data Access

Ontology-based data access (OBDA) deals with the problem of accessing autonomous data sources through a shared, virtual ontology, and declarative mappings connecting the data sources to the ontology. The W3C standard R2RML allows for mapping relational data sources to RDFS/OWL ontologies. In this paper, we present algorithms for the semantic analysis of R2RML mappings in the OBDA setting, when the ontology is expressed in OWL 2 QL. The focus of such algorithms is to identify the main semantical anomalies (inconsistency and redundancy) of a mapping specification with respect to the ontology and/or the data sources. Such algorithms have been implemented in the mapping analysis tool developed within the Optique European project. We also report on the experiments conducted within the Optique project use cases

Hearing Dysfunction in a Large Family Affected by Dominant Optic Atrophy (OPA8-Related DOA): A Human Model of Hidden Auditory Neuropathy

Hidden auditory neuropathy is characterized by reduced performances in challenging auditory tasks with the preservation of hearing thresholds, resulting from diffuse loss of cochlear inner hair cell (IHC) synapses following primary degeneration of unmyelinated terminals of auditory fibers. We report the audiological and electrophysiological findings collected from 10 members (4 males, 6 females) of a large Italian family affected by dominant optic atrophy, associated with the OPA8 locus, who complained of difficulties in understanding speech in the presence of noise. The patients were pooled into two groups, one consisting of 4 young adults (19–50 years) with normal hearing thresholds, and the other made up of 6 patients of an older age (55–72 years) showing mild hearing loss. Speech perception scores were normal in the first group and decreased in the second. Otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) and cochlear microphonics (CMs) recordings were consistent with preservation of outer hair cell (OHC) function in all patients, whereas auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) showed attenuated amplitudes in the first group and severe abnormalities in the second. Middle ear acoustic reflexes had delayed peak latencies in all patients in comparison with normally hearing individuals. Transtympanic electrocochleography (ECochG) recordings in response to 0.1 ms clicks at intensities from 120 to 60 dB peak equivalent SPL showed a reduction in amplitude of both summating potential (SP) and compound action potential (CAP) together with delayed CAP peak latencies and prolonged CAP duration in all patients in comparison with a control group of 20 normally hearing individuals. These findings indicate that underlying the hearing impairment in OPA8 patients is hidden AN resulting from diffuse loss of IHCs synapses. At an early stage the functional alterations only consist of abnormalities of ABR and ECochG potentials with increased latencies of acoustic reflexes, whereas reduction in speech perception scores become apparent with progression of the disease. Central mechanisms increasing the cortical gain are likely to compensate for the reduction of cochlear input

Designing Ontology-Based Data Access Solutions: Representation and Reasoning Support

While OBDA has been the focus of many different studies in recent years, these studies typically have focused on the core aspects of OBDA, in particular on query answering. Less attention, in this context, has been dedicated to other aspects such as ontology representation, ontology visualization, and intentional reasoning. From the experience matured in the last few years in working with OBDA, it is clear that these problems, while also representing independent research fields, all play a significant part in the construction of the architecture of a full-fledged OBDA system, and therefore must be addressed. Unfortunately, the results that are found in literature regarding these issues are unsatisfactory when taken in the context of OBDA, because they are not tailored towards the languages and the applications that are adopted under the OBDA framework. This thesis addresses these issues and presents solutions for them in the context of the OBDA framework. The integration of these solutions and techniques into an OBDA system allows to provide users with full support for all OBDA-related activities. We briefly summarize in the following the main contributions provided in this thesis: we present the novel Graphol language for the graphical specification of DL ontologies; we study the problem of approximating DL ontologies specified in an expressive source language in terms of less expressive target languages; we deal with core intentional reasoning services over an ontology, devising efficient methods and implementations that are specifically tailored towards languages that are suitable for OBDA

Towards efficient and practical solutions for ontology-based data management

This paper presents the research summary of my Ph.D. plan, which is currently in the early stages of its development. The objectives around which my work is focusing and that I will continue to pursue throughout the remainder of my doctoral activities are the development of tools and the definition of a methodology for the execution of those tasks that are typically performed when working with ontologies in the context of Ontology-Based Data Access (OBDA). The objective of this methodology is to guide the ontology engineer through ontology design, representation and approximation, and the issues I will address in order to provide the necessary tools to achieve this goal are the optimization of ontology classification in DL-Lite, the definition of a graphical language tailored towards ontologies, and the study of approximation of ontologies in expressive languages into DL-Lite logics. Such methodology proves to be necessary when facing the numerous challenges that often arise in real-world scenarios, in which the amount of data that is managed by information systems, and the processes that manage and act on this data grow continuously. © 2013 ACM