WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST WP4: Ontology Engineering Heiner Stuckenschmidt, Michel Klein Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam WonderWeb Review Meeting Brussels, March 11 th 2004

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Overview of Work Versioning –Detect, track and represent changes in semantic web ontologies –Deliverable 4.1 –Presented at first review Modularization –Represent, use and manage modular ontology descriptions –Deliverable 4.2 –Focus of this presentation Refinement –Enrich, extend and partition existing ontologies –Deliverable 4.3 –Due end of june   

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Role in WonderWeb Ontology Management –Wonderweb scenario includes the creation of different representations. –Different ontologies HR, DOLCE –Different versions of HR –These representations have to be managed to support and document the engineering process

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Motivation for Modularization Maintenance –Distributed Teams of Domain Experts –Update and Integrity Problems Validation –Manual Inspection of definitions difficult –Local errors are hard to spot Publication –Stable Subsets canot be published independently –Fine-grained Access Control not possible Processing –A single inconsistency disables reasoning for the whole model –Ontology Management Tools do not scale

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Outline and Contributions Modular Architecture –We proposed an architecture for modular ontologies an analyze the role of mappings in logical reasoning across modules. Compilation of Implied Knowledge –We described a knowledge compilation approach that makes local reasoning within modules possible and define the notion of integrity. Change Detection and Automatic Update –We developed an update strategy that preserves integrity by identifying changes in ontology modules and deciding whether the compiled knowledge has to be updated or not.

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Concrete Case: The WonderWeb Case Study

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Definition of Mappings HR:Employee(x) HR:  y(manages(y,x)) HR:  y(Department(y)  hasMember(y,x)  Employee(x) Employee Fulltime Employee Department Member HeadOf Department DOLCE+HR ontology

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Reasoning and Compilation HR:Employee(x) HR:  y(manages(y,x)) HR:  y(Department(y)  hasMember(y,x)  Employee(x) Employee Fulltime Employee Department Member HeadOf Department DOLCE+HR ontology Added subsumption relations: –DepartmentMember  Employee (redundant) –HeadOfDepartment  Employee (redundant) –HeadOfDepartment  DepartmentMember

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Integrity and Change Integrity of two ontologies: M,M' |= M c, where M c is the result of adding subsumption axioms implied by M' to M Integrity cannot always be guaranteed if M' changes ! Characterize Changes: –harmless changes  integrity is preserved –harmful changes  integrity is destroyed

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Update Management Process Detecting Changes –find differences between ontologies Determining the Effect of Changes –add “generalized”, “specialized” or “unknown” to all concepts and relations Testing mappings against Effects –conjuncts of the more general queries are not allowed to become more specific –conjuncts of the more specific queries are not allowed to become more general

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Example from the Case Study HR:Employee(x) HR:  y(manages(y,x)) HR:  y(Department(y)  hasMember(y,x)  Employee(x) Employee Fulltime Employee Department Member HeadOf Department DOLCE+HR ontology Example relation: –HeadOfDepartment  DepartmentMember

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Detecting changes (D4.1) Changes are detected by comparison tool Syntax independent comparison: –analysis of RDF triples –language specific rules determine type of change IF exist:new not-exist:old THEN "HasClass restriction added on $Y to $Z"

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Specify the Effect of Changes Changes that (could) make definitions more specific attach a slot to a class change the superclass of a class to a class lower in the hierarchy add a class to the range of a slot add a cardinality constraint to a slot-restriction Changes that (could) make definitions more general remove a superclass relation change the superclass of a class to a class higher in the hierarchy remove a class from the range of a slot change a class definition from primitive to defined Examples of changes and their effect:

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Changes and Effects Detected Changes –The Property ‚employee- ‘ was removed from the concept ‘Employee‘ –The domain of the ‚manages‘ relation was refined from ‚employee‘ to ‚manager‘ Impact –‚Employee‘ becomes more general –‚manages‘ becomes more specific  Changes are harmless wrt to the implied subsumption between Department-Member and Head-of-Department  No Update required !

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Summary and Conclusions Practical Approach to Modularization –Limited Expressiveness (still far beyond OWL imports!) –Supports Update Management Update Management: –Advantages Can be done automatically Can avoid expensive subsumption reasoning –Disadvantage Used heuristics are not complete

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST Key Publications M. Klein: Change Management for Distributed Ontologies. PhD Thesis, submitted to the Faculty of Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam H. Stuckenschmidt, M. Klein: Integrity and Change in Modular Ontologies. Proceedings of IJCAI'03, Acapulco, Mexico, H. Stuckenschmidt, F. van Harmelen: Information Sharing on the Semantic Web, (Part IV: Distributed Ontologies) Springer Verlag, to appear Deliverables D41 and D42