A software engineering approach to ontology building

  • Authors:
  • Antonio De Nicola;Michele Missikoff;Roberto Navigli

  • Affiliations:
  • Istituto di Analisi dei Sistemi ed Informatica, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Viale Manzoni, 30-00185 Roma, Italy;Istituto di Analisi dei Sistemi ed Informatica, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Viale Manzoni, 30-00185 Roma, Italy;Dipartimento di Informatica, Universití di Roma "La Sapienza", Via Salaria, 113-00198 Roma, Italy

  • Venue:
  • Information Systems
  • Year:
  • 2009

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Ontologies are the backbone of the Semantic Web, a semantic-aware version of the World Wide Web. The availability of large-scale high quality domain ontologies depends on effective and usable methodologies aimed at supporting the crucial process of ontology building. Ontology building exhibits a structural and logical complexity that is comparable to the production of software artefacts. This paper proposes an ontology building methodology that capitalizes the large experience drawn from a widely used standard in software engineering: the Unified Software Development Process or Unified Process (UP). In particular, we propose UP for ONtology (UPON) building, a methodology for ontology building derived from the UP. UPON is presented with the support of a practical example in the eBusiness domain. A comparative evaluation with other methodologies and the results of its adoption in the context of the Athena EU Integrated Project are also discussed.