Automated Instance Migration between Evolving

Abstract

Abstract: An ontology, if used for practical purposes like in information systems, contains its controlled vocabulary (TBox) describing the semantics of the domain and the set of facts (ABox) about this domain. The elements of the ABox are ontology instances. If a domain is described by two or more different ontologies or if ontologies evolve, TBoxes are the first place to analyze the differences. However, even if the corresponding TBoxes are mapped to each other, ABox alignment is still required to be done. Though TBoxes may be aligned manually, the size of the corresponding ABoxes may well be a serious obstacle for feasibly finishing the job by hand. The paper presents our approach and recent research accomplishments in developing a methodology for solving this complex task semiautomatically. We call it Ontology Instance Migration Methodology (OIMM). It allows reducing the bulk of manual work in aligning one ontology to another one. Our simplified task is to populate the second one with the instances taken from the first one. We first build mappings between the TBoxes, then we proceed with creating an Ontology Instance Migration Scenario (OIMS) using the algorithm presented in this paper and the previously created mappings. We review the OIMS to validate it, edit incomplete and add missed transformations. Such manual additions are necessary to encode complex transformations. We finally execute the OIMS using the environment which performs the instance migration.