Semantic Interoperation of Information Systems by Evolving Ontologies through Formalized Social Processes

Semantic Interoperation of IS through Formalized Social Processes Christophe Debruyne and Robert Meersman

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Introduction

  Information systems (IS) on the Web are in general developed and maintained autonomously

  For IS to interoperate, an ontology is needed –  Agreement among all the stakeholders –  Ontologies evolve while the agreements are developed –  Ontologies are an externalization of the semantics outside an IS

  Ontology Engineering (OE) is a critical activity

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Semantic Interoperation of IS through Formalized Social Processes

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Contribution

  We discuss the social processes involved in ontology engineering and the role of natural language descriptions

  We present a method and formalism to structure these

  We developed a prototype that supports the method

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Method

  Use of structured NL –  Vehicle to elicit useful and

relevant concepts from community communication –  Mapping of these social processes to evolutionary process of

the emerging ontology

In conceptualizations, rigorously separate facts from all application specific interpretations –  Interpretations are performed by constraining the mapping

between application systems and the fact base of the ontology

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Method

  DOGMA Ontology Descriptions <, ci, K>

–  a lexon base, a finite set of plausible binary fact types called lexons <, t1, r1, r2, t2> <Vendor Community, Offer, has, is of, Title>

–  ci a partial function mapping context-identifiers and terms to concepts

–  K a finite set of ontological commitments containing – A selection of lexons – A mapping from application symbols to ontology terms – Predicates over those terms and roles to express constraints

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Context-identifiers, pointers to a community

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Method

  Example of a commitment

Ω-RIDL: Verheyden et al. (SWDB 2004), Trog et al. (RuleML 2007)

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Method

  The hybrid aspect of ontologies –  Ontologies are resources shared among humans working in a

community, and (networked) systems –  Mapping of terms to a concept is the result of a community

agreement –  Capture those agreements, turn comunities into first class

citizens of the ontology, resulting notion called hybrid ontology –  Fundamental technology: formalized glossaries, special linguistic

resources to support the agreement process

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Method   Hybrid Ontology Description (HOD) =<,G>

–  is a DOGMA Ontology Description –  The contexts in are called communities –  G is a glossary, a triple with components

– Gloss, a set of linguistic, human-interpretable glosses – g1, mapping community-term pairs to glosses – g2, mapping lexons to glosses

⟨VCard Community, Email Address⟩ à “The address of an email, a system of world-wide electronic communication in which a user can compose a message at one terminal that can be regenerated at the recipient’s terminal when the recipient logs in”

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Method

  Glossaries –  Glossary coherence: descriptions of lexons imply the description

of its terms –  Glossary consistence: for every two community-term pairs, if

those terms are described with the same gloss, then the communities involved should agree that they refer to the same concept – The converse does not necessarily hold – Too strong a constraint to be practical

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Method

  Glossaries –  Term-equivalence EQT. Given communities 1, 2 and term t,

we say that the two term glosses g1(1,t)=gloss1 and g1(2,t)=gloss2 are term-equivalent if any two communities agree that the given term refers to the same concept for both

–  Community-equivalence EQ. Given community and two terms t1, t2, we say that the two term glosses g1(,t1)=gloss1 and g1(,t2)=gloss2 are community-equivalent if that community agrees that the described terms refer to the same concept.

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Method

  Glossaries –  Term adoption. We say that community 1 adopts community-

term pair <2,t> iff – g1(1,t)=gloss1 and g1(2,t)=gloss2 are defined – EQT(gloss1,gloss2) they first “match” the two glosses – ci(1,t)=ci(2,t) they agree that both concepts are equal

– Term adoption is an assymetrical property

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Method

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Method

  Social Processes

Business Semantics Management: De Leenheer et al. Computers in Industry 2010

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Method

  Social Processes –  Scope: create motivation, scope problem, add/remove members,

propose resources –  Create: request to add lexon, request to add constraint –  Refine: request to remove lexon, request to remove constraint,

request to change supertype of term, request to change lexon hierarchy

–  Articulate: request to add/remove/change gloss, request to add/remove synonym

–  At any time: request for edit/peer review/information/help, comment and reply

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Method   Implementation of the ontology

OWL, RDF(S), …

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Method   Externalizations/Re-internalization

–  Commitments in the feed back loop –  Commitments provide valuable information on how members

commit to the ontology –  Used to generate queries to guide the dialogue in achieving

agreement Onto-Clippy!

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Tool

  First version built in Collibra’s tool suite for ontology engineering –  http://www.collibra.com/ –  Built around XWiki technology

  Second version built as a web application –  Built to be driven by social processes –  Follows the proposed formalism

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Tool (old)

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Experiment

  45 students, 3 communities: –  Vendors –  Request for Proposals (RFP) –  Product (common for both)

  Goal à reach agreement within and across communities to exchange data

  Results led to refinement of the ideas and a new

version of the prototype.

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Discussion oriented

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Method

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Conclusions

  We discussed the social processes involved in ontology engineering and the role of natural language descriptions

  We presented a method and formalism to structure these

  We developed a prototype that supports the method

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Future Work

  Additional experiments –  Open Semantic Cloud for Brussels (http://www.oscb.be/) –  TAS3 Trusted Architecture for Securely Shared Services

  Identification of more operators on glosses and concepts

  Capturing the types of agreements

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Questions?

Technology

Semantic Interoperation of Information Systems by Evolving Ontologies through Formalized Social Processes