Jérôme Euzenat, Antoine Zimmermann, Frederico Freitas, Alignment-based modules for encapsulating ontologies, in: Bernardo Cuenca Grau, Vasant Honavar, Anne Schlicht, Frank Wolter (eds), Proc. 2nd workshop on Modular ontologies (WoMO), Whistler (BC CA), pp32-45, 2007
Ontology engineering on the web requires a well-defined ontology module system that allows sharing knowledge. This involves declaring modules that expose their content through an interface which hides the way concepts are modeled. We provide a straightforward syntax for such modules which is mainly based on ontology alignments. We show how to adapt a generic semantics of alignments so that it accounts for the hiding of non-exported elements, but honor the semantics of the encapsulated ontologies. The generality of this framework allows modules to be reused within different contexts built upon various logical formalisms.
ontology alignment, modular ontology, ontology engineering