An approach to detection ontology changes

ABSTRACT

Ontologies change and evolve both on the level of schema and individuals in order to meet requirements of changing world. Changes involve adding, deleting and modifying elements in the ontology both on structural (schema related) and content (individuals related) levels. The changes can lead to incorrect conclusions and can cause malfunction of systems, which use ontology data. In this paper we describe a proposal of the method for automated detection of currentness of presented data, including meta-data, which are represented by an ontology. Method comes out from a detection of changes between different versions of the ontology. Besides identifying modifications in the ontology, the purpose of the method lies also in identifying equivalent elements, thanks to which we are able to track information sources over time. We describe possibilities of automated identification of changes between ontologies using heuristic methods and their realization as a software tool called OntoDiff for comparing ontologies.

REFERENCES

• 1: M. Ciglan, M. Babik, M. Laclavik, I. Budinska, and L. Hluchy. Corporate memory: A framework for supporting tools for acquisition, organization and maintenance of information and knowledge. In J. Zendulka, editor, Proc. of 9th Int. Conf. on Information Systems Implementation and Modelling (ISIM 2006), pages 185--192. MARQ, Ostrava, 2006.
• 2: M. Ehrig, P. Haase, M. Hefke, and N. Stojanovic. Similarity for ontologies - a comprehensive framework. In Proc. of 13th European Conf. on Inf. Systems, 2005.
• 3: Dennis Fetterly , Mark Manasse , Marc Najork , Janet L. Wiener, A large-scale study of the evolution of web pages, Software—Practice & Experience, v.34 n.2, p.213-237, February 2004 [doi>10.1002/spe.577]
• 4: P. Haase and Y. Sure. State of the art on ontology evolution, 2004. Available at www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS/ysu/publications/SEKT-D3.1.1.b.pdf.
• 5: J. Hunt and M. McIlroy. An algorithm for differential file comparison. Bell Telephone Labs CSTR #41, 1976. Available at www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/diff.ps.
• 6: Michel C. A. Klein , Dieter Fensel , Atanas Kiryakov , Damyan Ognyanov, Ontology Versioning and Change Detection on the Web, Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management. Ontologies and the Semantic Web, p.197-212, October 01-04, 2002
• 7: Alexander Maedche , Boris Motik , Ljiljana Stojanovic , Rudi Studer , Raphael Volz, Managing Multiple Ontologies and Ontology Evolution in Ontologging, Proceedings of the IFIP 17th World Computer Congress - TC12 Stream on Intelligent Information Processing, p.51-63, August 25-30, 2002
• 8: N. Noy, S. Kunnatur, M. Klein, and M. Musen. Tracking changes during ontology evolution. In Proc. of Int. Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2004), pages 259--273, 2004.
• 9: Natalya F. Noy , Mark A. Musen, Ontology Versioning in an Ontology Management Framework, IEEE Intelligent Systems, v.19 n.4, p.6-13, July 2004 [doi>10.1109/MIS.2004.33]
• 10: OCLC - Online Computer Library Center. Web characterization. Available at http://wcp.oclc.org.
• 11: P. Plessers and O. D. Troyer. Ontology change detection using a version log. In ISWC 2005, pages 578--592. Springer, LNCS 3729, 2005.
• 12: M. Tury. Identification and management of onology changes. Master's thesis, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, 2005.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.4 Hypertext/Hypermedia

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.9 Management

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Experimentation

Keywords:
OntoDiff software tool, content change, heuristics, ontology change, relative text comparison, structural change