State of Semantic Web: Ontology Aspects

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State of Semantic Web Ontology Aspects

• Rudi Studer Raphael Volz
• Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe
• http//www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS
• FZI Research Center for Information
• Technologies, KM Department (WIM)
• http//www.fzi.de/wim
• L3S Learning Lab, Hannover/Karlsruhe
• http//www.learninglab.de
• Ontoprise GmbH, Karlsruhe
• http//www.ontoprise.de
• DAML PI Meeting, Portland, October 2002

AIFB
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Developing the Semantic Web...

• Research Aspects
• Application-oriented vs. basic research
• Objectives and challenges
• Funding strategies
• DARPA, EU, ...
• vs.
• User Industrial Application Impact
• Product development
• User take-up

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User Industrial Application Impact in the Near
Future

• A lot of real-life applications need a flexible
  way of
• starting with a small amount of semantics
• enhancing the application gradually with more
  and more semanticsKeep entry barrier as low as
  possible!

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User Industrial Application Impact in the Near
Future Ontology Management

• Usability/Usage
• Connect to well-established modeling paradigm
• exploit industry know-how, e.g. UML, EER
• Keep initial learning effort small
• Light-weight ontologies pay off in a lot of
  applications
• see e.g. our On-To-Knowledge project experience
• Skill management (Swiss Life, Switzerland)
• Project management (British Telecom, UK)
• Different application domains raise different
  requirements

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User Industrial Application Impact in the Near
Future Ontology Management

• Implementation Aspects
• Exploit well-known implementation techniques
• to which extent do they meet the requirements
  that are set up by OWL / OWL Lite?
• Rely on scalable methods
• what can we take/learn from the DB community?

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User Industrial Application Impact
usage/ usability
impl. aspects
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User Industrial Application Impact
usage/ usability
OWL Lite1
OWL Lite2
OWL
impl. aspects
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Research Topics from an Industry Application
Perspective

• Ontology and Metadata Management
• Evolution / Versioning
• Learning / Metadata generation
• Support incremental approaches
• Engineering multiple ontologies / Mapping
• Personalization / Views
• First methods and tools are available, but a lot
  of aspects have to be clarified for industry
  applications

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Research Topics from an Industry Application
Perspective

• Scalability Issues
• Handling hundreds of interconnected ontologies
• Efficient handling of large-scale ontologies
• Metadata repositories
• Appropriate transaction mechanisms
• Keep notions simple enough to be able to provide
  applicable solutions!

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Thank you!

• Rudi Studer Raphael Volz
• Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe
• http//www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS
• FZI Research Center for Information
• Technologies, KM Department (WIM)
• http//www.fzi.de/wim
• L3S Learning Lab, Hannover/Karlsruhe
• http//www.learninglab.de
• Ontoprise GmbH, Karlsruhe
• http//www.ontoprise.de

AIFB