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FONTE - Factorizing ONTology Engineering complexity

 

Abstract

Because it is difficult to engineer a complex ontology with time, we here consider a method that allows for factorizing the complexity of the engineering process, FONTE (Factorizing ONTology Engineering complexity). FONTE divides the engineering task into building a time-less domain ontology and a temporal  theory independently from each other. FONTE provides an operator Å that assembles the two independently developed ontologies into the targeted ontology.

 

The assembly process

The assembly process comprises two main building blocks. First,the specification of temporal aspects for a time-less domain ontology remains dependent on the conceptualization of the
ontology engineer. In fact, the example used for illustrating the assembly of general axioms below shows that there are ontological decisions to be made that can not be derived from the structure analysis of the two ontologies and therefore require human interaction.  Second, in order to facilitate and accelerate the assembly of time-less domain concepts with temporal notions, the interactive process is supported by heuristics asking and pointing the engineer.

The assembly process runs as depicted in Figure.  It starts by an Initial Setup. Some basic operations are performed, namely loading the ontologies to be assembled, loading a set of rules to drive the process and initializing some process parameters. The rules and parameters are defined separately from the tool in order to allow for adaptations to the particular needs of different temporal ontologies. However the rules and parameters do not change when a new domain ontology is to be assembled. The Target Ontology initially corresponds to the union of the time-less domain ontology, O1, and the temporal theory, O2.

Initially, the user may re-structure some part of the domain ontology to include temporal aspects by defining and executing (what we call) task instances. When performing such re-structuring task instances, a structure analysis finds possibly implicated task instances and proposes them onto the Task List.
 

In subsequent iterations the engineer decides whether to accept an automatically proposed task instance from the Task List. Alternatively, the user may take new initiatives and define and execute a new task instance from scratch.

For manually defined task instances, a set of logical tests (Validate) are performed in order to detect the existence of any knowledge anomalies (e.g. circularity or redundancy). In contrast, the  acceptance of a proposed task instance does not require further checks as the checks are tested for validity before the user sees them.


By the Execute Task step the corresponding changes are made to the target ontology. Thereafter, the user decides either to pursue another iteration or to go to Conclude Process and accept the current Target Ontology as the final version.

 

Authors

Steffen Staab (AIFB/University of Karlsruhe)

Jorge Santos (DEI/ISEP)

 

Aknowledgemnts

 

 

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Last updated: Maio 14, 2008.