ebXMLRegistry Semantic Content Management SC

Use Case
UC ID: 8 Priority (L/M/H) : High
Use Case : Ontology search supporting ontology development
Description :  One of the premises of the Semantic Web is that terms will be reused rather than reinvented. RDF, RDFS, and OWL support this through the ability to reference resources described outside a document as easily as those described within. They also provide encourage this with various constructs for describing equivalence and other relationships between terms. But for reuse to occur, people will also need to be able to find the correct terms on which to build. This will require ontology repositories with appropriate search or query capabilities. This use case describes how an ontology developer might interact with such a repository to discover appropriate terms upon which to build a local ontology.
Actors : Ontology developer
Pre-Conditions: A repository populated with domain and higher level ontologies Post-Conditions: none
Basic Flow : Ontology developer searches repository for ontologies which contain classes specifically mentioned in the domain of identified property restrictions. Where a set of property terms is specified using a regular expression. Something like: return all classes where <class> *[m,M]ember <range>. See Examples below for OWL fragments that match this query. Repository returns a list of ontologies matching the query, probably presented with some standard metadata for each. Ontology developer chooses an ontology from the list and asks to browse that ontology. Ontology developer chooses to view the classes in the chosen ontology. Repository returns the classes with the ones in the domain requested earlier somehow tagged as such. Ontologist requests download of entire ontology for more detailed examination. Ontologist refines the terms from downloaded ontology in an organization ontology he creates for his enterprise.
Alternate Flow :
  • Alt flow 1: No suitable ontology found Ontologist finds no suitable general ontology, so he creates one. Ontologist uploads new reusable ontology to repository.
  • Alt flow 2: Navigate through specialized ontology Query returns terms too specialized for intended use. However, some are subtyped from another term defined in another ontology within the repository. Ontologist requests to follow link to ontology in which the supertype is defined. Repository selects ontology for browsing and returns list of the metatype (either properties or classes) of terms from the ontology containing the supertype of interest.
Exceptions :
  • Alt flow 1 Ontologist does not have permission to upload to the repository.
  • Alt flow 2 Supertype of interest is not described in the repository.
Includes Use Cases: None Special Requirements: None
Assumptions: This scenario assumes sufficient (property and class) information grouped in a single file. It also assumes that english words will be a useful tool in identifying concepts in ontology repositories. Note no subsumption reasoning is used for responses to these queries. This significantly scopes the query results, but could result in filtering the ontology desired
Use Case Relationships: None Issues : Ontology files in the repository may not have names that help explain their content, and may not even contain an owl:Ontology keyword to help distinguish them from rdf data files.
Examples: Files containing the following sample rdf/xml would match the example query described in the main flow above: (from http://www.mindswap.org/~golbeck/web/www04photo.owl) <owl:Class rdf:ID="Group"/> <owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="hasMember"> <rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Group"/> <rdfs:range rdf:resource="#Person"/> <owl:inverseOf rdf:resource="#memberOf"/> </owl:ObjectProperty> or (from my imagination) <owl:Class rdf:ID="OMGVotingList"> <rdfs:subClassOf> <owl:Restriction> <owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#hasMember"/> <owl:allValuesFrom rdf:resource="#OMGMember"/> </owl:Restriction> </rdfs:subClassOf> </owl:Class>

proposer ewallace@cme.nist.gov