Showing papers on "Ontology-based data integration published in 1998"

The Enterprise Ontology

Abstract: This is a comprehensive description of the Enterprise Ontology, a collection of terms and definitions relevant to business enterprises. We state its intended purposes, describe how we went about building it, define all the terms and describe our experiences in converting these into formal definitions. We then describe how we used the Enterprise Ontology and give an evaluation which compares the actual uses with original purposes. We conclude by summarising what we have learned. The Enterprise Ontology was developed within the Enterprise Project, a collaborative effort to provide a framework for enterprise modelling. The ontology was built to serve as a basis for this framework which includes methods and a computer tool set for enterprise modelling. We give an overview of the Enterprise Project, elaborate on the intended use of the ontology, and give a brief overview of the process we went through to build it. The scope of the Enterprise Ontology covers those core concepts required for the project, which will appeal to a wider audience. We present natural language definitions for all the terms, starting with the foundational concepts (e.g. entity, relationship, actor). These are used to define the main body of terms, which are divided into the following subject areas: activities, organisation, strategy and marketing. We review some of the things learned during the formalisation process of converting the natural language definitions into Ontolingua. We identify and propose solutions for what may be general problems occurring in the development of a wide range of ontologies in other domains. We then characterise in general terms the sorts of issues that will be faced when converting an informal ontology into a formal one. Finally, we describe our experiences in using the Enterprise Ontology. We compare these with the intended uses, noting our successes and failures. We conclude with an overall evaluation and summary of what we have learned.

Towards a general ontology of configuration

Abstract: This article presents a generalized ontology of product configuration as a step towards a general ontology of configuration, which is needed to reuse and share configuration knowledge. The ontology presented consists of a set of concepts for representing the knowledge on a configuration and the restrictions on possible configurations. The ontology is based on a synthesis of the main approaches to configuration. Earlier approaches are extended with new concepts arising from our practical experience on configurable products. The concepts include components, attributes, resources, ports, contexts, functions, constraints, and relations between these. The main contributions of this work are in the detailed conceptualization of knowledge on product structures and in extending the resource concept with contexts for limiting the availability and use of resources. In addition, constraint sets representing different views on the product are introduced. The ontology is compared with the previous work on configuration. It covers all the principal approaches, that is, connection-based, structure-based, resource-based, and function-based approaches to configuration. The dependencies between the concepts arising from different conceptualizations are briefly analyzed. Several ways in which the ontology could be extended are pointed out.

Building Ontologies at the Knowledge Level using the Ontology Design Environment

Abstract: This paper discusses how ontologies can be specified at the knowledge level using the set of intermediate representations (Gomez-Perez, Fernandez & de Vicente 1996) proposed by METHONTOLOGY (Fernandez, Gomez-Perez & Juristo 1997; and Gomez-Perez 1998). These intermediate representations bridge the gap between how people think about a domain and the languages in which ontologies are formalized. Thus, METHONTOLOGY enables experts and ontology makers unfamiliar with implementation environments to build ontologies from scratch. In this paper, we also present the ODE (Ontology Design Environment) as a software tool to specify ontologies at the knowledge level. ODE allows developers to specify their ontology by filling in tables and drawing graphs. Its multilingual generator module automatically translates the specification of the ontology into target languages.

Ontology reuse and application

Abstract: In this paper, we describe an investigation into the reuse and application of an existing ontology for the purpose of specifying and formally developing software for aircraft design. Our goals were to clearly identify the processes involved in the task, and assess the cost-effectiveness of reuse. Our conclusions are that (re)using an ontology is far from an automated process, and instead requires significant effort from the knowledge engineer. We describe and illustrate some intrinsic properties of the ontology translation problem and argue that fully automatic translators are unlikely to be forthcoming in the foreseeable future. Despite the effort involved, our subjective conclusions are that in this case knowledge reuse was cost-effective, and that it would have taken significantly longer to design the knowledge content of this ontology from scratch in our application. Our preliminary results are promising for achieving larger-scale knowledge reuse in the future.

Source integration in data warehousing

Abstract: Source integration is one of the core problems in data warehousing. Two critical factors for the design and maintenance of applications requiring source integration, and in particular data warehouse applications, are conceptual modeling of the domain, and reasoning support over the conceptual representation. We present a novel approach to conceptual modeling for source integration, which allows for suitably modeling the global concepts of the application, the individual information sources, and the constraints among different sources. Our methodological framework relies on the reasoning services associated with the modeling formalism to support an incremental source integration phase within the data warehouse design process.

The Basic Tools of Formal Ontology

Abstract: The term ‘formal ontology’ was first used by the philosopher Edmund Husserl in his Logical Investigations to signify the study of those formal structures and relations – above all relations of part and whole – which are exemplified in the subject-matters of the different material sciences. We follow Husserl in presenting the basic concepts of formal ontology as falling into three groups: the theory of part and whole, the theory of dependence, and the theory of boundary, continuity and contact. These basic concepts are presented in relation to the problem of providing an account of the formal ontology of the mesoscopic realm of everyday experience, and specifically of providing an account of the concept of individual substance.

(ONTO)2 Agent: an Ontology-based WWW broker to select ontologies

Abstract: Knowledge reuse by means of ontologies now faces three important problems: (1) there are no standardized identifying features that characterize ontologies from the user point of view; (2) there are no web sites using the same logical organization, presenting relevant information about ontologies; and (3) the search for appropriate ontologies is hard, timeconsuming and usually fruitless. To solve the above problems, we present: (1) a living set of features that allow us to characterize ontologies from the user point of view and have the same logical organization; (2) a living domain ontology about ontologies (called Reference Ontology) that gathers, describes and has links to existing ontologies; and (3) (ONTO)2Agent, the ontology-based www broker about ontologies that uses the Reference Ontology as a source of its knowledge and retrieves descriptions of ontologies that satisfy a given set of constraints. (ONTO)2Agent is available at http://delicias.dia.fi.upm.es/REFERENCE_ONTOLOGY/

Basic Concepts of Formal Ontology

Abstract: The term ‘formal ontology’ was first used by the philosopher Edmund Husserl in his Logical Investigations to signify the study of those formal structures and relations – above all relations of part and whole – which are exemplified in the subject-matters of the different material sciences. We follow Husserl in presenting the basic concepts of formal ontology as falling into three groups: the theory of part and whole, the theory of dependence, and the theory of boundary, continuity and contact. These basic concepts are presented in relation to the problem of providing an account of the formal ontology of the mesoscopic realm of everyday experience, and specifically of providing an account of the concept of individual substance.

ONTOGENERATION: Reusing Domain and Linguistic Ontologies for Spanish Text Generation

Abstract: A significant problem facing the reuse of ontologies is to make their content more widely accessible to any potential user. Wording all the information represented in an ontology is the best way to ease the retrieval and understanding of its contents. This article proposes a general approach to reuse domain and linguistic ontologies with natural language generation technology, describing a practical system for the generation of Spanish texts in the domain of chemical substances. For this purpose the following steps have been taken: (a) an ontology in the chemicals domain developed under the METHONTOLOGY framework and the Ontology Design Environment (ODE) has been taken as knowledge source; (b) the linguistic ontology GUM (Generalized Upper Model) used in other languages has been extended and modified for Spanish; (c) a Spanish grammar has been built following the systemic-functional model by using the KPML (Komet-Penman Multilingual) environment. As result, the final system named Ontogeneration permits the user to consult and retrieve all the information of the ontology in Spanish.

Roles of Shared Ontology in AI-ED Research

Abstract: A lot of research on AI-ED has been done to date. Although we have many theories and implemented systems some of which are used in practice, we still need promising directions to which effort should be devoted in order to enable further progress of AI-ED research. This paper discusses long-term perspectives of AI-ED research aiming at giving a clear view of what we need for further promoting the research and for enjoying the bright prosperity of AI-ED community. The main topic here is how to engineer knowledge in IESs. To do this, we analyze intelligent systems and show one of the essential properties common to existing intelligent systems is "Declarative representation of what the system knows". On the basis of this observation, we discuss the importance of ontology engineering which is a innovative research area in artificial intelligence. Ontology plays several roles critical to overcoming the drawbacks which the current IESs have. (1) It makes systems smart and reflexive. (2) It explicates the conceptualization on which the system is based. (3) It contributes to standardization of vocabulary. (4) It enables them to be literate and hence to communicate with humans. (5) It makes knowledge reusable, and so forth. In this paper, we discuss how ontology contributes to IES research in general and exemplify how it makes authoring systems

Functional Ontology for Functional Understanding

Abstract: This article discusses an ontology of generic functional concepts of artifacts, called a functional ontology. We discuss the requirements for the ontology and the characteristics of some existing functional modeling languages. We present a functional ontology described by our functional modeling language FBRL (Sasajima et al. 1995) in terms of its mapping primitives between behavior and function. They make the definitions independent of their implementation. The functional ontology enables us to realize a functional understanding system which identifies functional structures of an artifact from its behavioral and structural model. It plays a crucial role to specify and limit the functional space. This article also presents a framework of the functional understanding system and an example of functional understanding of a power plant.

The Ontology of Fields

Abstract: While philosophers define ontology as a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being, within the knowledge representation and reasoning community, a more tractable definition exists There, an ontology is a specification of a conceptualization or a definition of the vocabulary used to represent knowledge An ontology describes the concepts and relationships that exist within a specific domain and describes all that can be represented about that domain An ontology of fields that explicitly characterizes spatially continuous phenomena in order that they can be consistently modeled and completely described within spatial databases is needed An ontology of fields must be based on a formal definition of fields We argue that the classical definition of a field as a function on a domain which is a subset of space-time is accurate, explicit and expressive, and provides access to the full set of mathematical tools for the characterization of fields Thus, we conclude that there is no need for more ontology Presented at GeoComputation’98, Bristol UK, Sept 17-19, 1998 Distributed on the Conference

Designing with the Activity/Space Ontology

Abstract: The concept of ontology entered the field of artificial intelligence as a formal system for representing domain concepts and their related linguistic realisations by means of basic elements. We present an ontology that delineates the categories of building design knowledge as “activity” and “space”: the Activity/Space (A/S) ontology. Activity is related to the functionality of the design, or the activities that can take place in a given space. This knowledge model addresses the need to represent requirements corresponding to both the functionality of the spaces in the building and the geometric or physical description of the building. It makes explicit the representation of activities, spaces, and their relationships. The A/S ontology specifically focuses on architectural design, the design of space, bounded by physical objects, in contrast to other types of design, such as the design of engines or computer chips where the solid parts of the design are the focus. The ontology provides a knowledge resource as well as a dynamic framework for representing the changing design description during the specification-design-use-redesign lifecycle.

Collaborative Development and Use of Ontologies for Design

Abstract: In this paper, we introduce ontology-centric knowledge organization approach to realize design knowledge base system for sharing and reuse of knowledge. Since ontology is used here as an intermediate level of information representation between the model and media level of information, it can work to bridge multiple models and multiple users. DesignersAmplifier is a workbench for designers where they can store, organize their information resources, and also can communicate to other designers based on the ontology-centric knowledge organization. DesignersAmplifier helps designers to organize documents with ontology. For example, it can re-build documents as hypertexts of which hyper-links are linked to concepts in ontology. It can help designers to expand search words by ontology or by collocation data in documents. DesignersAmplifier can help communication among designers by exchanging ontologies. We realized exchanging ontologies by mobile agent architecture.

Management Information Models Integration: FromExisting Approaches to New Unifying Guidelines

Abstract: The evolution towards a higher-level management requires management information obtained from physical to application elements as well as distinct resources (e.g., PC, UNIX workstations). This issue is difficult because the modeling of management information is realized in many different ways and the information model integration represents an acute current concern. In this paper we discuss this integration issue by specifying the sources of Management Information Base (MIB) heterogeneity and identifying theoretical means characterizing approaches dealing with information models integration. Based on these results, the analysis of some existing integration approaches led to dissatisfactions thus justifying our contribution: integration guidelines and their implementation.

Integrating databases in Internet

Abstract: One of the difficult problems in database integration is to find and resolve the semantic heterogeneity of the component databases. In this paper, we present a methodology for database integration by using an ontology. The ontology is mainly used to help the designers to understand the semantics of database objects. Anyone who wants to share his database with others should provide an export schema of the database and a mapping between the schema and one or many standard ontologies. According to this mapping, the designer can easily find and resolve the semantic heterogeneity of the component databases and build an integrated schema.

The COIL Project: A Common Object Interconnection Language to Support Database Integration and Evolution1

Abstract: The COIL Project is an effort to design a module interconnection language specifically for managing database integration and evolution. This project is a significant part of a larger effort to build a database integration and evolution environment called Sanctuary. COIL will make a significant contribution to module interconnection language research by providing interface symmetry, application-level module composition, and syntactic analysis capabilities for systems constructed with the Object Management Group’s Common Object Request Broker Technology (CORBA). Since CORBA is the state-of-the-art in distributed, object-based technologies, and since it has been adopted by over 800 software vendors, software developers and end users, this research will have immediate and high impact. This paper presents a discussion of the motivation, background, and fundamental module interconnection language issues and goals for the COIL project.

Towards semantic integration within an existing medical information system.

Abstract: Talking about the problems of integration in medical information systems, the necessity to provide end users with a consistent and coherent view of patient's data, has been largely reported. In order to attempt this goal, systems need to perform semantic integration. We propose a pragmatic way to describe the semantics of the elements of a database, based on a bottom-up three steps process: 1. a back documentation of the elements of the system from their description contained in the data catalog of the database 2. a first semantic extension to transform a data catalog into a data dictionary 3. a second semantic extension to create a dictionary of the medical concepts from a data dictionary. This dictionary of concepts can be considered as the final result of "semantic integration". It contains a set of entities directly understandable by the end users. These entities are deduced or built from the elements collected and characterized in the data dictionary. This work reports the conceptual analysis and the implementation of such a data dictionary.

Design of a Heterogeneous Data Integration System Based on CORBA

Abstract: A scheme, designed for integration of heterogeneous data sources based on CORBA(common object request broker architecture) in a plug play way, is put forward in this paper. An object model, named OIM(object model for integration), is proposed as the common data model for integration. The system can integrate various heterogeneous data sources, ranging from database systems, file systems, to hypertext files in World Wide Web. Any other data source, if wrapped according to the specified way can be integrated into the system, whenever necessary. The architecture, OIM, query processing, user interface design are introduced in some detail in the paper.

Some theoretical considerations on integration of ontlogies

Abstract: In this paper, we discuss integration of multiple ontologies in a formal way. First, we formalize ontology as combination of logical theories with modality. We introduce two types of integration. Combination aspect connects heterogeneous aspects in which aspect theories are simply merged. On the other hand, category aspect connects homogeneous aspects in which aspect theories are connected with possibility modality. In the above formalization, inter-aspect theories are de ned syntactically but no semantical indication are given. Then we introduce abduction as a heuristics to nd inter-aspect theories. Abduction can produce hypothesis which may integrate di erent aspects. To ensure integration of aspects in hypothesis, we use superposition of hypothesis which try to minimalize instances in hypothesis.

Integration of Schemas Containing Data Versions and Time Components

Abstract: Data processing in modern information systems often require access to data stored in multiple heterogeneous databases. Schema integration is an important step for providing database integration and interoperability of distributed database systems. The process of schema integration requires knowledge of the semantics of component database schemas and must be supported by a database designer. The paper presents various models containing data versions and time components used in business systems and their possible semantic heterogeneity. Also, the techniques for integration of schemas containing version models are discussed and the methodology for creating an integrated schema with versions is proposed.

Semantic Integration of Embedded Systems Design Data in an Industrial Setting.

Abstract: Companies with complex, safety-critical products --- aircraft, power plants, automobiles, satellites, and spacecraft --- increasingly use computer-based models to design, analyze, and simulate the product. While model-based development has numerous, well documented benefits, the current practice has spawned significant new problems: large quantities of model data are locked in tool-proprietary representations, preventing efficient processes, limiting the choice of best-of-breed tools, and engendering inconsistent data. The paper describes an applied research prototype whose goal is to demonstrate effective data sharing between processes and tools used in designing commercial airplane systems. The prototype makes use of selected data interchange standards and repository technology to interchange data across two engineering specialty areas --- functional analysis and reliability analysis. The underlying issue described in this paper is the resolution of semantic heterogeneity of multi-disciplinary systems design data.