Hierarchical Contextualization of Ontology Space

From semanticweb.org

getdarlier eltdarcnalao A poster presentation written by Krzysztof Goczyla, Wojciech Waloszek and Aleksander Waloszek. It was presented at the ESWC2007. It is about modelling, ontology, contextualization, context and inheritance

[edit] Abstract

OWL semantics introduces the notion of ontology space in which many ontologies coexist, being related to each other in various extent. Size and homogeneity of this space is an obstacle for proper interpretation and inference. Contextualization of the space, proposed by Bouquet et al., established a kind of arrangement into this space by introducing descriptions of relations between ontologies along with the notion of local interpretations and holes. However we still have to deal with large amount of information organized in a flat structure, which is hard to read, to manage and to infer from.

In the paper we propose a method of structuralizing an ontology space into a hierarchy. We based this method on the mechanism of class abstraction, inheritance and instantiation, which proven its worthiness within object paradigm, and adopted the mechanism to contextualized ontology space by introducing the notions of context definition, context instances and context inheritance. We also propose a way of arranging local interpretations in order to enable them to play a role analogical to class instances.

Practical application of the method introduces very interesting possibilities, like shortening the time of inference or storing contradictory sub-interpretations within a single knowledge base without exploitation of the, somehow artificial, notion of hole. That possibilities have been verified by practical implementation in KaSeA system.

In the paper we also compare our idea with existing approaches to contextualization and sketch the possible development of our work.

This data has been imported from the ESWC2007 RDF