Techniques for ontology construction and use

• Composing an ontology from pre-existing modules
  • Ontolingua (Farquhar et al.)
    • KIF
    • modules defined
    • first order logic + frame ontology (classes and object-oriented methods)
    • reuse across modules by inclusion, polymorphic refinement and restriction
• Composing ontologies by algebraic composition of slices
  • SKB project (Wiederhold)

• Merging distinct ontologies
  • Pangloss/Sensus experiences
  • Merged Upper Model
  • relation to other semantic merging activities
  • Alignment techniques

• Shared upper structures: single upper ontology across distinct domain ontologies
  • Penman Upper Model
  • Generalized Upper Model

• Shared upper layers: possible multiple upper meta-ontologies shared across object ontologies
  • Information-Flow Framework (Kent, 2000)
    • Seeks to combine FCA (Wille), Category theory and Information Flow (Barwise)
    • Attempts to improve re-usability by increasing the formal power and explicitness of the ontology ‘meta-levels’
      
• Use of category theory and formal mathematical techniques such as co-limits and fusion (e.g., Uschold)