survey of ontology engineering methodologies

Intelligent E-Commerce System Lab.

Survey of Ontology Engineering Methodologies

22071062 Aettie Ji


OUTLINE Part 1 – Review of Chap. 9 in “Semantic Web

Technologies”, Davies, J., R. Studer and P. Warren, WILEY Introduction The Methodology Focus Past and Current Research DILIGENT Methodology Discussion and Next Step

Part 2 - Brief Introduction of NeOn Methodology, NeON Project, http://www.neon-project.org

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Part1 - Ontology Engineering Methodologies

Sure, Y., C. Tempich and D. Vrandecic

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Introduction Methodologies of traditional knowledge

management systems(KMS) Centralized Approach Domain experts who provide the model for the

knowledge Ontology engineers who structure and formalize it

Decentralized knowledge management systems Methodologies based on traditional, centralized KMS are no longer feasible.

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Methodology Focus Ontology Engineering Methodology

Ontology management activities Scheduling of the ontology engineering task Control mechanism and quality assurance steps.

Ontology development activities Procedures to specify, conceptualize, formalize, and

implement ontology (which is defined for environment and feasibility study)

Guidance for the maintenance, population, use, and evolution of the ontology.

Ontology support activities Knowledge acquisition, evaluation, integration, merging

and alignment, and configuration management.

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Methodology Focus Documentation

Results of each activities Sometime the decision making process itself

Evaluation Means to measure the quality of the created

ontology Difficult!! in most cases, modeling decisions are

subjective. Measures derived from statistical data or

philosophical principles. OntoClean (Guarino and Welty, 2002)

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Past and Current Research Methodologies

UPON, (Nicole et al., 2005) HCONE (Kotis et al., 2004) OTK Methodology (Sure, 2003) OntoWeb project, (Leger et al., 2002) CommonKADS, (Schreiber et al., 1999) DOGMA, (Jarrar and Meersman , 2002) The Enterprise Ontology, (Uschod and King, 1995) The KACTUS, (Bernaras et al., 1996) METHODOLOGY, (Fernandez-Lopez et al., 1999) Etc.

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Past and Current Research Discussion and Open Issues

1. Ontology maintenance support.2. Distributed ontology engineering.3. Fine-grained guidelines for all phases.4. Representation of multiple views.5. Agreement support under conflicting interests.6. Best practices.7. Ontology engineering with the help of automated

methods.8. Process definition by single process step

combination.9. Integration into business process model.10. Cost estimation and pricing.

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Past and Current Research

Ontology Engineering Tools KAON OImodeller (Bozsak et al., 2002; Motika et

al., 2002) Protégé (Noy et al., 2000) WebODE (Arptrez et al., 2001) OntoEdit(=OntoStudio) (Sure et al., 2002, 2003)

Open Issues Support for an arbitrary process Inter-operability Technical solution to support versioning, ontology

learning or distributed engineering of ontologies

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DILIGENT Methodology Assumptions

The users: Several experts involved in collaboratively building

the same ontology who are also users. Much larger community of users than the community of

experts. Birds-eye view:

Users are free to use and modify an initial ontology locally.

A central board maintains and assures the quality of the core ontology.

The board is responsible for updating the core ontology.

The board only loosely controls the process.

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DILIGENT Methodology Main Steps

Build An initial ontology doesn’t have to be complete, It should be relatively small for easy access.

Local adaptation Users work with the core ontology and adopt it locally

to their own needs. They are not allowed to directly change the shared

ontology. The control board collects changes requests to it and

logs local adaptation.

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Analysis The board analyses the local ontologies and the

requests for changes and tries to identify similarities in users’ ontologies.

Deciding which changes are going to be introduced in the next version of the shared ontology is crucial activity of the board.

Revision The board should regularly revise the shared ontology

realigning users needs and gaining higher acceptance, ‘sharedness’ and less local differences.

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Revision Users can be involved in ontology development and

evaluate the ontology from an usability point of view. Domain experts evaluates it from a domain point of

view. Knowledge engineers evaluates it from a domain

and technical point of view. Ontology engineers are responsible for technical

evaluation, including analyzing and balancing arguments, and updating the ontology.

Local Update User can update their own local ontologies to better

use the knowledge represented in the new version.

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DILIGENT Methodology

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DILIGENT Methodology Argumentation Support

The exchange of arguments should be embedded into a general argumentation framework. Facilitating the ontology engineering and evaluation process. Offering more fine-grained guidance to achieve agreement.

The creation of a shared conceptualization without any guidance is almost impossible, or time consuming.

Argumentation model of DILIGENT Two virtual chat room, one for providing topics for discussion,

hand raising and voting and the other one for exchanging arguments.

Due to the stricter procedural rule agreement is reached more quickly and a much wider consensus is reached.

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Conclusion and Next Steps With DILIGENT methodology, some of open issues are

tackled and proposed a methodology which allows continuous improvement of the underlying ontology in distributed setting.

The methodology is still under development to cover The improved quality of the results of current ontology learning

methods. A more fine-grained process model. Criteria to identify proper ontology evaluation scheme. Tools for a more automatic appliance of such evaluation

technique. Integration the process model into a knowledge management

business model. The estimation of costs incurred by the building process. Capturing experiences and describing best practices from

application.

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Part 2 – Brief Introduction of NeOn Methodology

NeOn Projecthttp://www.neon-project.org

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Comparison of Presented Methodologies

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Comparison of Presented Methodologies Regarding NeOn dimensions,

In the collaboration dimension, none of the methodologies consider distributed ontology engineering. (DILIGENT does it, but it only provides a rich argumentation framework.)

In context dimension, none of them treat with it. None of them provide guidelines for treating the

dynamic and evolution of the ontology. None of them provide detailed guidelines for

the process or activities. None of them are described targeted to

software developers and ontology practitioners.

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Aim within the NeOn Project Creation of the NeOn methodology for

building ontology networks covering the drawbacks of the three methodologies and benefiting from the advantages included in such methodologies.

NeOn methodology will include the benefits provided by DILGENT about collaboration.

Furthermore, it will take into account the proposal of METHONTOLOGY and On-To-Knowledge about the use of competency questions for the ontology specification activity.

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When do Ontologies become Ontology Network? If there is a requirement or it is advisable to

express meta relationship, for example priorVersionOf useImports extendingBy composedByModules haveMapping

Ontology permits a fluent knowledge sharing and an easy enrichment of the network.

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NeOn Ontology Development Process Consensus reaching process

For the identification and definition of the activities involved in the ontology network development process.

NeOn glossary of activities Definitions of the activities involved in ontology

network construction, which have been collaboratively built and consensuated by all NeOn partners, by means of the consensus reaching process.

NeOn Table of “Recommended and If-Applicable” A classification of the activities required for the

development of ontology networks and those that are applicable, but not required, and, therefore, they are non-essential or dispensable.

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O. DiagnosisO. Repair

O. ExtensionO. Specialization

O. ModularizationO. Module ExtractionO. Partitioning

O. SpecificationO. ConceptualizationO. FormalizationO. Implementation

O. Assessment

O. UpdateO. Upgrade

Development

Activities

Maintenance

Activities

Use Activities

NeOn Ontology Development Process

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O. Documentation

Knowledge AcquisitionO. ElicitationO. Learning

O. EvaluationO. ValidationO. Verification

O. Pruning

O. Enrichment

Environment StudyFeasibility Study

O. IntegrationO. MappingO. Merging

O. Combining

O. TranslatingO. Population

O. Transforming

O. Evolution

O. VersioningO. Summarization

O. AlignmentO. Configuration Management

O. ReuseO. SearchingO. Selection


Scenarios for Building Ontology Networks 9 identified NeOn scenarios for building

ontology network. Scenario 1: Building ontology networks from

scratch without reusing existing knowledge resources.

Scenario 2: Building ontology networks by reusing and reengineering non ontological resources.

Scenario 3: Building ontology networks by reusing ontological resources.

Scenario 4: Building ontology networks by reusing and reengineering ontological resources.

Scenario 5: Building ontology networks by reusing and merging ontological resources.

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Scenarios for Building Ontology Networks 9 identified NeOn scenarios for building

ontology network. Scenario 6: Building ontology networks by reusing,

merging and reengineering ontological resources. Scenario 7: Building ontology networks by reusing

ontology design patterns. Scenario 8: Building ontology networks by

restructuring ontological resources. Scenario 9: Building ontology networks by

localizing ontological resources.

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Scenarios in the Ontology Life Cycle


Life Cycle of Ontology Networks NeOn Life Cycle Models

Waterfall Ontology Network Life Cycle Model Incremental Ontology Network Life Cycle Model Iterative Ontology Network Life Cycle Model Evolving Prototyping Ontology Network Life Cycle

Model Spiral Ontology Network Life Cycle Model

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Conclusions and References Which one are the activities involved in the

ontology development process? Which one is the goal of each activity?

NeOn Glossary of Activities NeOnTable of “Recommended and If-Applicable” NeOn Development Process

When should I carry out each activity? Where is the relationship of one activity with

the others? Ontology Network Life Cycle models

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Conclusions and References Where can I find ontologies with the goal of

reusing them? Ontology Metadata Vocabulary Ontology Registries

How can I build the ontology for my application?

Do I need a single ontology or an ontology network? Several examples from NeOn deliverables 5.3.1

and 5.4.1.

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