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Contents 1 WMap – Environment for Collaborative Management of Ontologies Integration 1.1 Goals 1.2 Description: 1.3 Project members 1.4 Tasks in WMap project 1.4.1 Start-up tasks 1.4.2 Main project tasks

WMap – Environment for Collaborative Management of Ontologies Integration

Goals

WMap project (WSMX Mapping) will develop a collaborative management system enabling definition of ontologies and mappings between these ontologies. Additionally a web-based application will be designed, where experts from various domains could collaborate to deliver ontology-based mappings enabling interoperability in various domains.

Description:

The idea of ontology re-introduced by the Semantic Web was about to solve the problems with interoperability between systems developed by different vendors. Currently we are facing the problem that either there is an abundances of ontologies in the domain of discourse (e.g. Medicine) or there is not even one that would capture the ideas represented by the metadata used so far (e.g. digital libraries). In business domain we have some initiatives to develop ontologies for existing business vocabularies such as for example DERI initiative of ontologizing of EDI1, but so far these efforts are very distributed and without strong support from industry they do not have chance for success. That is why we propose WMap project, where we would like to design and implement software environment for collaborative definition of ontologies and mappings between them.

To create a mapping ontology for the domain of discourse like medicine or business an opinion from various experts on specific fields is required. Very often it is not possible to gather all experts in one place to come up with a solution. That is why there is a need for collaboration portal where the experts could suggest the mappings, concepts, and afterwards discuss over them. On the base of discussion and evaluations provided by other members of the community working on specific ontology, the core mapping ontology can be developed. Since the ontology might aim to capture an evolving domain of interest, there is also a need for an environment to manage concurrent versions of the ontology.

In the medicine it would be not possible to define one ontology capturing all concepts. But it is possible to define a mapping ontology for a specific project. In the digital libraries there is a need for an ontology that would cover the ideas utilized by the most common description format known from classic libraries: MARC21. For business ontologies we need world wide acceptance if we want ontology to be adopted by industry. Each scenario requires different approach. The ontologies should be developed by multiply parties and agreement should be reached on on how to map from one ontology to the other. Since the solution should be based on the community agreement there is a need for a collaboration environment so that parties from different academic and industry places could cooperate together. The suggestions proposed by members of the community should be evaluated by others. On the base of the evaluations the concurrent versions of the core ontology are delivered. The idea of negotiations based ontology for digital libraries being developed within the MarcOnt Initiative2

The aim of the project is to create a web-based collaboration and negotiations environment where different community members could cooperate on delivering collaboration based ontologies. Work on WMap project is strongly related to work, which WSMX working group already carries on the data-to-data mediation component. Currently in mediation component ontologies are loaded from files and mapping results are saved in the database. There is no collaborative mechanism implemented so far. The collaboration portal should provide means for versioning core ontologies and suggestions, annotating and evaluating suggestion. The environment should also protect the core ontology from applying conflicting suggestion. To provide additional access for the community members, an interface for mobile devices should be delivered.

Figure 1. Operations in the lifecycle of ontology in collaboration portal

Project members

Students realizing the project

• Michal Wozniak
• Pawel Szczecki
• Piotr Piotrowski

Supervising, advising project members

• Marcin Synak
• Lukasz Kwoska
• Adrian Mocan
• Pawel Baniel

Project director

• Sebastian Ryszard Kruk

Tasks in WMap project

Start-up tasks

1.Sign in to:

• http://sourceforge.net
• marcont-devel@lists.sf.net
• marcont-users@lists.sf.net
• marcont-commit@lists.sf.net
• marcont-list@lists.deri.org

2.Get to the MarcOnt CVS source

3.Learn:

• RDF
• Ontology

4.Shop around possible strategies:

• building from the bottom with YARS, Marcin's code, own semi-versioning, Lukasz'es wrapper
• building from the middle with Sesame + SemVers + Lukasz'es wrapper
• building from the middle with Jena, own semi-versioning, Lukasz'es wrapper
• building from the top of SemVers + Lukasz'es wrapper

5.Learn the good guidelines from e.g. Longwell

Main project tasks

1.Define interfaces for ontology management system with versioning

• adding new suggestions (classes, properties, instances, mapping rules, restrictions)
• versioning suggestions
• merging suggestions in to concurrent versions of core ontology

2.Define collaboration and negotiations interface for ontology management system:

• annotating suggestions
• evaluating suggestions
• resolving conflicts between suggestions

3.Develop collaboration portal:

• create DHTML-based ontology management user interface
• web-based access
• create J2ME-based ontology management user interface
• mobile devices access
• provide support for multiple communities within one portal
• create ontology repository for the communities created ad-hoc (problem solving communities)