NeOn Components for Ontology Sharing and Reuse Mathieu d’Aquin (and the NeOn Consortium) KMi, the Open Univeristy, UK

IST NeOn-project.org Slide 2 The NeOn Project (briefly)  Enabling applications exploiting the Semantic Web at large –Dynamically retrieving the relevant semantic resources –Combining several, heterogeneous Ontologies  Challenges : – heterogeneity, large-scale semantics, metadata and ontology dynamics, distributed development, etc.  Key Outcomes : – the NeOn toolkit, a complete environment for ontology lifecycle management – reference architecture for semantic applications – methodological guidelines – community building – 3 case studies in 2 domains

IST NeOn-project.org Slide 3 NeOn Architecture Watson ontology search, exploration and querying Oyster ontology metadata Management and registry Alignment Server alignment storage, production, evaluation ORS Review and rating Of ontology, ranking And associated plugins!

IST NeOn-project.org Slide 4 The NeOn Toolkit  Reference implementation of the NeOn architecture –Support ontology engineering and management –Support for complete ontology lifecycle –Support for different languages (OWL, F-Logic) –Support for networked ontologies (modules, mappings)  Built on the Eclipse platform  Extensible architecture –Via Eclipse plugin mechanism –Via Web Services

IST NeOn-project.org Slide 5Oyster  The NeON ontology registry system  Allows ontology designer to share ontologies by describing their metadata and….  … distribute them over a peer-to-peer network

IST NeOn-project.org Slide 6Watson  Watson is a Gateway to the Semantic Web  It collects (through web crawling), analyses, indexes and gives access to semantic information and ontologies on the Web  At first sight: a search engine for the Semantic Web  But focuses on providing high level services and APIs for application development

IST NeOn-project.org Slide 7 And Also…  The Alignment server –Store and manage ontology alignments online –Retrieve and manipulate alignments –Evaluate alignments –Produce alignments with an extensible set of mathcing techniques –Based on the alignment API  TS-ORS –An Open Rating System for Ontologies –Allow users to review different properties of ontologies (e.g. reusability, coverage, etc.) –Allow users to express trust and distrust statements on reviews –Provide customized ontology ranking mechanisms based on collaborative evaluations

IST NeOn-project.org Slide 8 Watson Engine Open Rating System Alignment Server Cupboard Interface APIs and GUIs for search, querying, exploration, etc. Ontology submissions Ontology metadata Ontology rating Trust statements Mapping submissions Putting things together…

IST NeOn-project.org Slide 9Cupboard Cupboard.open.ac.u k

IST NeOn-project.org Slide 10 Summary Metadata Reviews

IST NeOn-project.org Services and APIs Slide 11 For ontology applications developers, Cupboard provides services to find and explore hosted ontologies (Watson API), to retrieve metadata (Oyster P2P system), assess Ontologies (TS-ORS) and manipulate aligments (Alignment Server)

IST NeOn-project.org Slide 12 Building a community of ontology developers  Nice developments and interfaces are not enough –How do we encourage people to share their ontologies through our systems? –How do we attract users to retrieve and reuse ontologies from our systems? –How do we obtain feedbacks from the community, obtain reviews and quality information on ontologies, encourage discussions within the community on ontology design, application reuse?  Elements of solution? –Provide infrastructure services to facilitate the exploitation of ontologies? –Provide Web 2.0 like features (reviews, forums, tagging, comments, etc.) –?