KWTR: ontology engineering tools

[edit] Contributors:

Oscar Corcho

• What is the state of the art of Semantic Web in your research field?

There are several types of ontology engineering tools available, in the academic and commercial environments. Ontology engineering tools allow creating ontologies and implementing them in Semantic Web languages like RDF(S) and OWL, although some of them are only specialized in one of the languages. Besides, some of them provide additional tools that go beyond the simple editing of ontologies in these languages, integrating tools or services for ontology merging and integration, documentation, querying, reasoning, etc.

• Provide references and short abstracts of three papers you consider as significant in your research field.

Gómez-Pérez A, Fernández-López M, Corcho O (2003) Ontological Engineering. Springer-Verlag. Chapter 5 provides an overview of the most relevant ontology engineering tools as of 2003.

Gómez-Pérez A (editor, 2002). A survey on ontology tools. OntoWeb Deliverable 1.3. This deliverable is the one in which the previous chapter is based, and provides additional infomation about some of the tools, provided in general by the tool developers.

J. Gennari, M. A. Musen, R. W. Fergerson, W. E. Grosso, M. Crubezy, H. Eriksson, N. F. Noy, S. W. Tu. The Evolution of Protégé: An Environment for Knowledge-Based Systems Development. 2002. This paper describes the evolution of one of the most widely-used ontology engineering tools: Protégé.

• Please provide one or more examples (either business, or research, or both) in which semantic web has been used (if you can, add some references).

Ontology engineering tools are used as the basis for ontology development in any application (in business or research, or both).

• Are there existing tools or demos? Please indicate some of them.

- Academic: Protégé, SWOOP, KAON, OilEd, WebODE.

- Commercial: TopBraid Composer, Altova SemanticWorks

• What are the open problems in your Semantic Web research field? Why?

More robust support to ontology development, from a commercial perspective.

Better support for the development of large ontologies.

Better support for collaborative development of ontologies

Better support for the integration of ontologies and ontology modules (imports, etc.)

Better graphical and documentation support

• Provide references and links of the most relevant Semantic Web research projects in your field.

CO-ODE project (http://www.co-ode.org/)

Protégé (http://protege.stanford.edu/)

• What challenges try these projects to overcome?

Collaborative development and integrated support for ontology development

• What are their foreseen benefits (both in market and scientific community)?

Improve the support for ontology development in all aspects of this process.

• When, in your opinion, will projects’ results be ready for industry?

2-5 years

• Do you think that it is important to invest (money and time) in these topics? Why?

Yes, since it is the basis of any ontology-based development

• What are, in your opinion, the most relevant Semantic Web challenges that will be solved in the long term (10 years)? Why?

Most of the work to be done in the long term will be related to the inclusion of new techniques for ontology development, giving support to new activities that appear in the context of ontology-based system development, etc.