1.
Semantic Interoperation of
IS through Formalized
Social Processes
Christophe Debruyne and Robert Meersman
30/10/11 Herhaling titel van presentatie 1

2.
Introduction
Information systems (IS) on the Web are in general
developed and maintained autonomously
For IS to interoperate, an ontology is needed
– Agreement among all the stakeholders
– Ontologies evolve while the agreements are developed
– Ontologies are an externalization of the semantics outside an IS
Ontology Engineering (OE) is a critical activity
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
30/10/11 Pag.2

3.
Contribution
We discuss the social processes involved in ontology
engineering and the role of natural language
descriptions
We present a method and
formalism to structure these
We developed a prototype that supports the method
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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4.
Method
Use of structured NL
– Vehicle to elicit useful and
relevant concepts from community communication
– Mapping of these social processes to evolutionary process of
the emerging ontology
In conceptualizations, rigorously separate facts
from all application specific interpretations
– Interpretations are performed by constraining the mapping
between application systems and the fact base of the
ontology
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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5.
! ! ! Context-
Method identifiers, pointers to a
community
DOGMA Ontology Descriptions <!, ci, K>
– ! a lexon base, a finite set of plausible binary fact types called
lexons <!, t1, r1, r2, t2>
<Vendor Community, Offer, has, is of, Title>
– ci a partial function mapping context-identifiers and terms to
concepts
– K a finite set of ontological commitments containing
– A selection of lexons
– A mapping from application symbols to ontology terms
– Predicates over those terms and roles to express constraints
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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6.
Method
Example of a commitment
Ω-RIDL: Verheyden et al. (SWDB 2004), Trog et al. (RuleML 2007)
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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7.
Method
The hybrid aspect of ontologies
– Ontologies are resources shared among humans working in a
community, and (networked) systems
– Mapping of terms to a concept is the result of a community
agreement
– Capture those agreements, turn comunities into first class
citizens of the ontology, resulting notion called hybrid ontology
– Fundamental technology: formalized glossaries, special linguistic
resources to support the agreement process
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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8.
Method
Hybrid Ontology Description (HOD) !!=<!,G>
– ! is a DOGMA Ontology Description
– The contexts in ! are called communities
– G is a glossary, a triple with components
– Gloss, a set of linguistic, human-interpretable glosses
– g1, mapping community-term pairs to glosses
– g2, mapping lexons to glosses
⟨VCard Community, Email Address⟩ à “The address
of an email, a system of world-wide electronic
communication in which a user can compose a
message at one terminal that can be regenerated at
the recipient’s terminal when the recipient logs in”
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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9.
Method
Glossaries
– Glossary coherence: descriptions of lexons imply the description
of its terms
– Glossary consistence: for every two community-term pairs, if
those terms are described with the same gloss, then the
communities involved should agree that they refer to the same
concept
– The converse does not necessarily hold
– Too strong a constraint to be practical
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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10.
Method
Glossaries
– Term-equivalence EQT. Given communities !1, !2 and term t,
we say that the two term glosses g1(!1,t)=gloss1 and
g1(!2,t)=gloss2 are term-equivalent if any two communities
agree that the given term refers to the same concept for both
– Community-equivalence EQ!. Given community ! and two
terms t1, t2, we say that the two term glosses g1(!,t1)=gloss1
and g1(!,t2)=gloss2 are community-equivalent if that
community agrees that the described terms refer to the same
concept.
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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11.
Method
Glossaries
– Term adoption. We say that community !1 adopts community-
term pair <!2,t> iff
– g1(!1,t)=gloss1 and g1(!2,t)=gloss2 are defined
– EQT(gloss1,gloss2) they first “match” the two glosses
– ci(!1,t)=ci(!2,t) they agree that both concepts are equal
– Term adoption is an assymetrical property
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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12.
Method
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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13.
Method
Social Processes
Business Semantics Management: De Leenheer et al. Computers in Industry 2010
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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14.
Method
Social Processes
– Scope: create motivation, scope problem, add/remove members,
propose resources
– Create: request to add lexon, request to add constraint
– Refine: request to remove lexon, request to remove constraint,
request to change supertype of term, request to change lexon
hierarchy
– Articulate: request to add/remove/change gloss, request to add/
remove synonym
– At any time: request for edit/peer review/information/help,
comment and reply
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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15.
Method
Implementation of the ontology
OWL, RDF(S), …
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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16.
Method
Externalizations/Re-internalization
– Commitments in the feed back loop
– Commitments provide valuable information on how members
commit to the ontology
– Used to generate queries to guide the dialogue in achieving
agreement
Onto-Clippy!
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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17.
Tool
First version built in Collibra’s tool suite for ontology
engineering
– http://www.collibra.com/
– Built around XWiki technology
Second version built as a web application
– Built to be driven by social processes
– Follows the proposed formalism
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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18.
Tool (old)
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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19.
Experiment
45 students, 3 communities:
– Vendors
– Request for Proposals (RFP)
– Product (common for both)
Goal à reach agreement within and across
communities to exchange data
Results led to refinement of the ideas and a new
version of the prototype.
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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20.
Pag.

21.
Discussion oriented
Pag.

22.
Pag.

23.
Method
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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24.
Conclusions
We discussed the social processes involved in ontology
engineering and the role of natural language
descriptions
We presented a method and formalism to structure
these
We developed a prototype that supports the method
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
30/10/11 Pag.24

25.
Future Work
Additional experiments
– Open Semantic Cloud for Brussels (http://www.oscb.be/)
– TAS3 Trusted Architecture for Securely Shared Services
Identification of more operators on glosses and
concepts
Capturing the types of agreements
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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26.
Questions?
Semantic Interoperation of IS through
Formalized Social Processes
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