Characterizing Modular Ontologies

Sarra Ben Abbès (1) , Andreas Scheuermann (2) , Thomas Meilender (3) , Mathieu d'Aquin (4)

1 LIPN - Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris-Nord
2 Information Systems 2 [Stuttgart]
3 ORPAILLEUR - Knowledge representation, reasonning
4 KMi - Knowledge Media Institute

Since large monolithic ontologies are di cult to handle and reuse ontology modularization has attracted increasing attention. Several approaches and tools have been developed to support ontology modularization. Despite these e orts, a lack of knowledge about characteristics of modularly organized ontologies prevents further development. This work aims at characterizing modular ontologies. Therefore, we analyze existing modular ontologies by applying selected metrics from software engineering in order to identify recurring structures, i.e. patterns in modularly organized ontologies. The contribution is a set of four patterns which characterize modularly organized ontologies.

Mots clés: modules; ontology; modularization; patterns

Domaines: Informatique et langage [cs.CL]

Sarra Ben Abbès, Andreas Scheuermann, Thomas Meilender, Mathieu d'Aquin. Characterizing Modular Ontologies. International Conference on Formal Ontologies in Information Systems (FOIS), Jul 2012, Graz, Austria. pp.13-25. ⟨hal-00710035v1⟩