A New Method for the Semantic Integration of Multiple OWL Ontologies using Alignments
This work addresses semantic interoperability for ontology integration, but it is incremental as it builds on existing alignment methods.
The paper tackles the problem of integrating multiple OWL ontologies by creating a bridge ontology with bridging axioms and a new quality criterion to minimize semantic conflicts, and tests the OIA2R tool on OAEI data, showing it is generic, efficient, and powerful.
This work is done as part of a master's thesis project. The goal is to integrate two or more ontologies (of the same or close domains) in a new consistent and coherent OWL ontology to insure semantic interoperability between them. To do this, we have chosen to create a bridge ontology that includes all source ontologies and their bridging axioms in a customized way. In addition, we introduced a new criterion for obtaining an ontology of better quality (having the minimum of semantic/logical conflicts). We have also proposed new terminology and definitions that clarify the unclear and misplaced "integration" and "merging" notions that are randomly used in state-of-the-art works. Finally, we tested and evaluated our OIA2R tool using ontologies and reference alignments of the OAEI campaign. It turned out that it is generic, efficient and powerful enough.