OM2R : semantic documentation of ontology mapping lifecycle to support retrieval and reuse of ontology mappings

Abstract

Ontology mappings are of critical importance for the Linked Data and the Semantic Web communities as they can help to mitigate the effects of heterogeneities, which are a major obstacle to the promise of interoperability of knowledge. To reduce creation costs and enable automated runtime integration, the description, discovery and most of all re-use of existing ontology mappings are needed. Meta-data can help to retrieve ontology mappings, to apply them and to manage them over time. The research question posed in this thesis is: To what extent can a meta-data model aid an ontology engineer in the creation of consistent and relevant documentation of ontology mappings, for applications such as those supporting ontology mapping reuse? To address this question the ontology based OM2R model for documenting ontology mappings was designed. Experiments show that the OM2R model can help to improve mapping discovery and that the model is relevant for mapping reuse. Furthermore, the evaluation showed that the OM2R model can support the creation of consistent meta-data. In summary, the OM2R model developed supports ontology engineers in the creation of relevant and consistent ontology mapping documentation which will be vital to address the ongoing need for mapping retrieval and reuse in the Semantic Web and Linked Data community.