The Semantic Web 10/3/2001

Contents
Ontologies
What is an ontology?
An example ontology
Why ontologies?
Tools for building ontologies
Key application areas
Ontologies vs. components
A vision
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What is an ontology? What is an ontology?

Classic definitions Classic definitions

(Gruber, 1993), (Guarino, 1994) (Gruber, 1993), (Guarino, 1994)
?a specification of a conceptualization ?a specification of concepts to be used for
?an explicit specification of some topic expressing knowledge
?a formal and declarative representation of types of entities
some subject area attributes and properties
relations and functions
constraints

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What is an ontology? What is an ontology?

Other important definitions Other important definitions

(Swartout and Tate, 1999)
?the basic structure or armature
around which a knowledge base can be built
(Hendler, 2001)
?a set of knowledge terms, including the
vocabulary, the semantic interconnections,
and some simple rules of inference and logic
for some particular topic
?this definition is currently predominant
in The Semantic Web community

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What is an ontology? What is an ontology?

What does an ontology provide? What does an ontology provide?

?the vocabulary (or names) for referring to the
terms in that subject area
?the logical statements that describe:
what the terms are
how they are related to each other
how they can or cannot be related to each other
?rules for combining terms and relations to
define extensions to the vocabulary
?semantics independent of reader and context
?a common understanding of topics that can be
communicated between users and applications

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What is an ontology? What is an ontology?

What is the purpose of ontologies? What is an ontological commitment?

?knowledge sharing and reuse
?description of the concepts and relationships
that can exist for an IA or a community of IAs
the description is like a formal specification of a
program
?an agreement to use a vocabulary
using it in a way that is consistent (but not complete)
w.r.t. the theory specified by an ontology
?an agreement to build agents that commit to
ontologies

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What is an ontology? What is an ontology?

What is an ontological commitment? Universe of discourse

?an agreement to design ontologies for ?the set of objects that can be represented when
knowledge sharing the knowledge of a domain is represented
we should be able to share knowledge using a declarative formalism
with and among the agents we build
Example
?the universe of discourse in the ontology of a
program
classes, relations, functions, and other objects

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An Example Ontology An Example Ontology

The Frame ontology (Gruber, 1993)
?partial vocabulary of the Frame ontology
class relation (?relation)
class function (?function)
class class (?class)
relation instance-of (?individual ?class)
function all-instances (?class) :-> ?set-of-instances
function one-of (@instances) :-> ?class
The Frame ontology (Gruber, 1993)
?partial vocabulary of the Frame ontology
relation subclass-of (?child-class ?parent-class)
relation superclass-of (?parent-class ?child-class)
relation subrelation-of (?child-relation ?parent-relation)
relation direct-instance-of (?individual ?class)
relation direct-subclass-of (?child-class ?parent-class)

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Why Ontologies? Why Ontologies?

The role of ontologies in the architecture The role of ontologies in the architecture
of The Semantic Web of The Semantic Web
?to enable intelligent services ?to establish further levels of interoperability
information brokers (semantic interoperability) on the Web
search agents syntactic interoperability:
information filters reusability in parsing the data
intelligent information integration semantic interoperability: mappings between terms
within the data, which requires content analysis
knowledge management

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Why Ontologies? Why Ontologies?

The role of ontologies in the architecture A common ontology defines:

of The Semantic Web
?to add a further representation and inference
layer on top of the Webs current layers
?to enable Web-based knowledge processing,
sharing, and reuse between applications
?the vocabulary with which queries and
assertions are exchanged among agents
?axioms that do constrain the possible
interpretations for the defined terms

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Why Ontologies? Why Ontologies?

Ontologies make possible to define an Ontology hierarchies

infrastructure for integrating intelligent ?top-level abstract ontologies at the root
systems at the knowledge level ?domain-specific ontologies at the leaves
?the knowledge level is independent of particular Automatic interoperability
implementations
between a pair of ontologies
One possible interpretation of ontologies: ?it exists to the degree that they share a
taxonomic hierarchies of classes and the common ancestor
subsumption relation
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Why Ontologies? Why Ontologies?

Ontologies merely serve to standardize and Ontologies are heterogeneous

provide interpretations for Web content ?ontologies are specialized
To make content machine-understandable, for specific tasks and methods
Web pages must contain semantic markup ?however, ontologies can have many concepts
in common
?descriptions which use the terminology that
one or more ontologies define

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Why Ontologies? Tools for Building Ontologies

Reusability can be achieved by XML / XMLS, RDF / RDFS,

development of:
?libraries of standard foundation ontologies
?tools for composing and specializing
foundation ontologies
Ontologies applied to the World Wide Web
are creating the Semantic Web
and the corresponding development tools
Ontology representation languages
(The Semantic Web languages)
Ontology-development environments
(integrated graphical tools)
Ontology-learning tools

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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Ontology representation languages The need:

?Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) a standardized Web ontology language
?Simple HTML Ontology Extensions (SHOE ) ?is it emerging already?
?XML-based ontology -exchange language (XOL) ?OIL, DAML+ OIL, ?
?ISO standard for "OIL, a proposal for such a standard"
describing knowledge structures (Topic Maps) ?W3C and ISO efforts?
?DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML)
?Ontology Inference Layer ( OIL, DAML+ OIL)
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Tools for Building Ontologies

Ideally, we would like a universal shared
knowledge-representation language to support
the Semantic Web, but for a variety of pragmatic
and technological reasons, this is unachievable
in practice. Instead, we will have to live with a
multitude of metadata representations.
S. Decker et al.
Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF)
?interlingua for translating knowledge
representation languages
?based on first-order predicate calculus
?the core of early
ontology-representation languages

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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) Generic Frame Protocol - GFP

?example (Karp et al., 1995)
(forall ?W "All writers are ?developed by SRI International and Stanford U.
(=> (writer ?W) misunderstood ?generic interface to underlying
(exists (?R ?D) by some reader." frame representation systems ( FRSs)
(and (reader ?R)
(document ?D) ?generic model of frame representation
(writes ?W ?D) ?access functions for interacting with FRSs
(reads ?R ?D)
(not (understands ?R ?D)))) ?applications independence from a specific FRS
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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Development of generic tools that The translation is done by a library of OO

operate on many FRSs methods
Translation layer between: FRS developers provide translators
?the generic knowledge-base functions ?translation from their representation language
?an existing FRS-specific functional interface to the language of GFP

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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

The idea behind GFP Using GFP in Ontolingua

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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Ontology Inference Layer (OIL) Ontology Inference Layer (OIL)

Full-fledged Web-based Basic
ontology languages ontological
OIL DAML+OIL
(+markup) modeling
HTML as
an XML primitives
Standard for
application RDFS The Semantic Web
structuring Simple
"layer cake"
documents XHTML RDF model for (T. Berners-Lee,
representing
2000)
HTML XML semantics
Arbitrary domain- and task-specific extensions
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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Ontology Inference Layer (OIL) Ontology Inference Layer (OIL)

?proposed standard for ?definition of a formal semantics for OIL
specifying and exchanging ontologies based on description logics
?a more intuitive choice of some of the ?development of customized editors and
modeling primitives inference engines to work with OIL
widely used modelling primitives ?a layered approach to
from frame-based languages a standard ontology language
?richer ways to define concepts and attributes

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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Ontology Inference Layer (OIL) Ontology Inference Layer (OIL)

?defining an ontology in RDF means
Even simple defining an RDF schema (RDFS)
An OIL
RDF Schema it specifies all the concepts and relationships
processor
will also agents are of the particular language
able to every ontology (RDFS) uses its own namespace
understand
process the (the prefix oil is used in OIL)
RDFS
OIL ontologies namespaces allow for mixing terms from different
ontologies in one RDF document without confusion

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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Ontology Inference Layer (OIL) Ontology Inference Layer (OIL)

?example ?steps in
<rdfs:Class rdf:ID=herbivore> using an ontology language L to extend RDF
<rdf:type rdf:resource=http://www.ontoknowledge.org/oil/ step 1 - describe language Ls modeling primitives
RDFS-schema/#DefinedClass/>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf :resource=#animal/> using RDFS
<rdfs:subClassOf> this step effectively means
<oil:NOT> writing the meta-ontology of L in RDFS
<oil:hasOperand rdf :resource="#carnivore"/>
</oil:NOT>
</rdfs:subClassOf> Can be captured
</rdfs:Class> by a pure RDFS application
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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Ontology Inference Layer (OIL) Ontology Inference Layer (OIL)

?steps in
using an ontology language L to extend RDF
step 1 - describe language Ls modeling primitives
using RDFS
this step effectively means
writing the meta-ontology of L in RDFS
?steps in
using an ontology language L to extend RDF
step 1 - describe language Ls modeling primitives
using RDFS
this step effectively means
writing the meta-ontology of L in RDFS

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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Ontology Inference Layer (OIL) Ontology Inference Layer (OIL)

?steps in ?steps in
using an ontology language L to extend RDF using an ontology language L to extend RDF
step 2 - describe a specific ontology in L step 2 - describe a specific ontology in L
using the resulting RDFS document using the resulting RDFS document

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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Ontology Inference Layer (OIL) Ontology Inference Layer (OIL)

?steps in ?steps in
using an ontology language L to extend RDF using an ontology language L to extend RDF
step 2 - describe a specific ontology in L step 3 - describe instances of the specific L ontology
using the resulting RDFS document modeled in step 2 using the RDFS documents
class-def defined herbivore
subclass-of animal, NOT carnivore OIL
slot-constraint eats syntax
value -type plant
OR (slot-constraint is-part -of has-value plant)
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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Ontology Inference Layer (OIL) Ontology Inference Layer (OIL)

?steps
<rdfs:Classinrdf:ID=herbivore> ?tools
<rdf:type
using an rdf:resource=http://www.ontoknowledge.org/oil/
ontology language L to extend RDF
RDFS-schema/#DefinedClass/> ontology editors
step 3 - describe
<rdfs:subClassOf instances of the specific L ontology
rdf :resource=#animal/> ?to build new ontologies
modeled in step 2 using the RDFS documents
<rdfs:subClassOf> OntoEdit (University of Karlsruhe, Germany)
<oil:NOT>
<oil:hasOperand rdf :resource="#carnivore"/> OILed (University of Manchester, UK)
</oil:NOT>
</rdfs:subClassOf>
</rdfs:Class>

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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Ontology Inference Layer (OIL) Ontology Inference Layer (OIL)

?tools ?tools
ontology-based annotation tools reasoning with ontologies
?link unstructured and semistructured information sources ?enables advanced query-answering services
with ontologies ?supports ontology creation
?derive an XML DTD and an XML Schema definition ?helps map between different ontologies
from an ontology in OIL
FaCT (University of Manchester, UK)
?derive an RDF and RDFS definition for instances from OIL

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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML)
?DAML, DAML- ONT, DAML-L, DAML+OIL ?high expressiveness
?representing semantic relations ?built on top of RDF/RDFS
in machine-readable ways layered approach to language development
binding the information on a page compatibility
to machine-readable semantics with current and future Internet technologies
?unambiguous computer-interpretability ?roots in AI description logic
agent interoperability, automated-reasoning DAML-L: representing Horn -clause rules

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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML)
?mechanisms for explicit representation of
services, processes, and business models
nonexplicit information can be recognized
(such as that encapsulated in programs or sensors)
DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML)
?allowing for communities to extend simple
ontologies for their own use
?allowing the bottom-up design of meaning while
allowing sharing of higher- level concepts

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Tools for Building Ontologies Tools for Building Ontologies

Ontology-development environments Ontology-development environments

?Ontolingua (Stanford University, USA) ?Protg (Stanford University, USA)
KIF-based interlingua for ontologies + ?OIL and DAML+ OIL suite of tools
ontology library
?
?ODE (Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain)
compatible with Ontolingua
?JOE, Java-based Ontology Editor
(University of South Carolina, USA)

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Tools for Building Ontologies Key Application Areas

Ontology-learning tools Where are ontologies useful? (Fikes, 1997)

?tools for manually building ontologies ?collaboration
?mechanizing the ontology building process with interdisciplinary teams
machine learning techniques agent-agent communication
?interoperation
Q: What is beyond The Semantic Web? information integration
A: The Learning Web distributed applications

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Key Application Areas Key Application Areas

Where are ontologies useful? (Fikes, 1997) E-commerce

?education ?ontologies enable machine-based
publication medium communication between buyers and sellers
reference source ?vertical integration of markets
?modeling ?description reuse
reusable building blocks between different marketplaces

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Key Application Areas Ontologies vs. Components

Search engines What is the correspondence between

?using ontologies to find pages with syntactically software components and ontologies?
different but semantically similar words ?both require common vocabulary and a certain
organizational structure
?ontologies are conceptually more abstract
?components are more "down on Earth" things
?ontologies should be
the basis for component development
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Ontologies vs. Components A Vision

Can ontologies be components The Semantic Web's evolving infrastructure

and vice versa?
?as for now, it looks more or less obvious that
components can be parts of ontologies
?it is also possible to develop a component that
fully corresponds to certain ontology
?there are components shared by
different domains and different ontologies
?not just a few large, complex, consistent
ontologies that great numbers of users share
?great number of small ontological components
consisting largely of pointers to each other
?Web users will develop them in much the same
way that Web content is created ("anarchy")

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