Scalable interoperability through the use of COIN lightweight ontology

  • Authors:

  • Hongwei Zhu;Stuart E. Madnick

  • Affiliations:

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA and Old Dominion University, College of Business and Public Administration, Norfolk, VA;Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA

  • Venue:
  • ODBIS'05/06 Proceedings of the First and Second VLDB conference on Ontologies-based databases and information systems
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

There are many different kinds of ontologies used for different purposes in modern computing. A continuum exists from lightweight ontologies to formal ontologies. In this paper we compare and contrast the lightweight ontology and the formal ontology approaches to data interoperability. Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses, but they both lack scalability because of the n2 problem. We present an approach that combines their strengths and avoids their weaknesses. In this approach, the ontology includes only high level concepts; subtle differences in the interpretation of the concepts are captured as context descriptions outside the ontology. The resulting ontology is simple, thus it is easy to create. It also provides a structure for context descriptions. The structure can be exploited to facilitate automatic composition of context mappings. This mechanism leads to a scalable solution to semantic interoperability among disparate data sources and contexts.