Abstract
In this paper, we propose a new formalism for modular ontologies, which exploits the notion of interfaces as well as epistemic queries. In the proposed formalism, each ontology module both employs and realizes two distinct sets of interfaces. The axioms in each interface form the public section of the ontology module, while its ABox and TBoxes are private and can only be accessed through epistemic queries. This formalism permits the separation of configuration and development time manipulation tasks of a modular ontology development process. Hence, ontology modules can be developed independently of each others’ signature and description language.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bao, J., Caragea, D., Honavar, V.: Modular ontologies - a formal investigation of semantics and expressivity. In: Mizoguchi, R., Shi, Z.-Z., Giunchiglia, F. (eds.) ASWC 2006. LNCS, vol. 4185, pp. 616–631. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Bao, J., Honavar, V.: Ontology language extensions to support collaborative ontology building. In: International Semantic Web Conference (2003) Poster Track
Bao, J., Slutzki, G., Honavar, V.: A semantic importing approach to knowledge reuse from multiple ontologies. In: AAAI, pp. 1304–1309 (2007)
Borgida, A., Serafini, L.: Distributed description logics: Assimilating information from peer sources. J. Data Semantics 1, 153–184 (2003)
Ding, Y., Foo, S.: Ontology research and development. part 1- a review of ontology generation. Journal of Information Science 28(2), 123–136 (2002)
Donini, F.M., Lenzerini, M., Nardi, D., Nutt, W., Schaerf, A.: An epistemic operator for description logics. Artif. Intell. 100(1-2), 225–274 (1998)
Ensan, F., Du, W.: Towards domain-centric ontology development and maintenance frameworks. In: The Nineteenth International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE), pp. 622–627 (2007)
Ensan, F., Du, W.: Aspects of inconsistency resolution in modular ontologies. In: Canadian Conference on AI, pp. 84–95 (2008)
Ensan, F., Du, W.: Formalizing the role of goals in the development of domain-specific ontological frameworks. In: 41st Hawaii International International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS-41), p. 120 (2008)
Fernandez-Lopez, M., Gomez-Perez, A.: Overview and analysis of methodologies for building ontologies. Knowl. Eng. Rev. 17(2), 129–156 (2002)
Fernandez-Lopez, M., Gomez-Perez, A., Sierra, J.P., Sierra, A.P.: Building a chemical ontology using methontology and the ontology design environment. IEEE Intelligent Systems 14(1), 37–46 (1999)
Ghilardi, S., Lutz, C., Wolter, F.: Did I damage my ontology? a case for conservative extensions in description logics. In: Doherty, P., Mylopoulos, J., Welty, C. (eds.), pp. 187–197. AAAI Press, Menlo Park (2006)
Grau, B.C., Horrocks, I., Kazakov, Y., Sattler, U.: Just the right amount: extracting modules from ontologies. In: WWW 2007: Proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web, pp. 717–726. ACM, New York (2007)
Grau, B.C., Horrocks, I., Kazakov, Y., Sattler, U.: A logical framework for modularity of ontologies. In: Veloso, M.M. (ed.) IJCAI 2007, pp. 298–303 (2007)
Grau, B.C., Kutz, O.: Modular ontology languages revisited. In: Proceedings of the IJCAI 2007 Workshop on Semantic Web for Collaborative Knowledge Acquisition, Hyderabad, India, January 2007 (2007)
Grau, B.C., Parsia, B., Sirin, E., Kalyanpur, A.: Modularity and web ontologies. In: Doherty, P., Mylopoulos, J., Welty, C.A. (eds.) KR 2006, pp. 198–209. AAAI Press, Menlo Park (2006)
Horrocks, I., Sattler, U.: Ontology reasoning in the shoq(d) description logic. In: IJCAI, pp. 199–204 (2001)
Horrocks, I., Sattler, U.: A tableau decision procedure for hoiq. J. Autom. Reasoning 39(3), 249–276 (2007)
Horrocks, I., Sattler, U., Tobies, S.: Practical reasoning for expressive description logics. In: Ganzinger, H., McAllester, D., Voronkov, A. (eds.) LPAR 1999. LNCS, vol. 1705, pp. 161–180. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)
Kalyanpur, A., Parsia, B., Sirin, E., Grau, B.C., Hendler, J.: Swoop: A web ontology editing browser. Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web 4, 144–153 (2006)
Kutz, O., Lutz, C., Wolter, F., Zakharyaschev, M.: E-connections of abstract description systems. Artif. Intell. 156(1), 1–73 (2004)
Stuckenschmidt, H., Klein, M.C.: Integrity and change in modular ontologies. In: IJCAI, pp. 900–908 (2003)
Uschold, M., Gruninger, M.: Ontologies: Principles, methods and applications. Knowledge Engineering Review 11, 93–136 (1996)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Ensan, F. (2008). Formalizing Ontology Modularization through the Notion of Interfaces. In: Gangemi, A., Euzenat, J. (eds) Knowledge Engineering: Practice and Patterns. EKAW 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 5268. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-87696-0_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-87696-0_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-87695-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-87696-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)