Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
ence to the OntoClean methodology [
28
] and ontological modelling principles, or
general ontology evaluation techniques such as competency questions and fidelity
requirements, as further discussed in Sect.
9.5.2
.
9.4 Blending with the Distributed Ontology Language
DOL
The distributed ontology language
DOL
is a formal language for specifying both
ontologies, base diagrams, and their blends.
DOL
is a metalanguage in the sense that
it enables the reuse of existing ontologies (written in some ontology language like
OWL or Common Logic) as building blocks for new ontologies and, further, allows
the specification of intended relationships between ontologies. One important feature
of
DOL
is the ability to combine ontologies that are written in different languages
without changing their semantics.
DOL
is being submitted as a response to the
Object Management Group's (OMG) Ontology, Model and Specification Integration
and Interoperability (OntoIOp) Request For Proposal.
6
In this section, we introduce
DOL
only informally. A formal specification of the
language and its model-theoretic semantics can be found in [
52
,
53
].
For the purpose of ontology blending the following features of
DOL
are relevant:
•
a
distributed ontology
consists of basic and structured ontologies and ontology
interpretations. A basic ontology is an ontology written in some ontology language
(e.g., OWL or Common Logic). A structured ontology builds on basic ontologies
with the help of ontology translations, ontology unions, and symbol hiding.
•
a
basic ontology
ʣ,ʓ
written in some ontology language;
ʣ
is a signature,
ʓ
a set of
ʣ
-sentences, with
Mod
(
ʣ,ʓ
)
containing all
ʣ
-models satisfying
ʓ
;
•
ontology translation
(written
O
1
with
). A translation takes an ontology
O
1
and
a renaming function (technically, signaturemorphism)
˃
. The result of a translation
is an ontology
O
2
, which differs from the ontology
O
1
only by substituting the
symbols as specified by the renaming function.
˃
•
ontology union
(written
O
1
and
O
2
). The union of two ontologies
O
1
and
O
2
is
a new ontology
O
3
, which combines the axioms of both ontologies.
•
symbol hiding
(written
O
1
hide
s
1
,...,
s
n
). A symbol hiding takes an ontology
O
1
and a set of symbols
s
1
,...,
s
n
. The result of the hiding is a new ontology
O
2
, which is the result of 'removing' the symbols
s
1
,...,
s
n
from the signature of
ontology
O
1
. Nevertheless,
O
2
keeps all semantic constraints from
O
1
.
7
•
ontology interpretation
(written
interpretation
INT
_
NAME
:
O
1
to
O
2
=
). An
ontology interpretation is a claim about the relationship between two ontologies
O
1
and
O
2
, giving some renaming function
˃
˃
. It states that all the constraints that
are the result of translating
O
1
with
˃
logically follow from
O
2
.
7
By approximation, one could consider
O
2
as the ontology that is the result of existentially quan-
tifying
s
1
,...,
s
n
in
O
1
.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search