A lightweight ontology repository
Jin Pan, Stephen Cranefield, Daniel Carter · 2003
Multi-agent systems rely on shared ontologies to enable unambiguous communication between agents. An ontology defines the terms or vocabularies used within messages encoded using an agent communication language (ACL). In order for ontologies to be shared and reused, ontology repositories are needed to store and maintain ontologies. The Otago Ontology Repository is a prototype implementation of a design to allow ontology designers and agents to use open Web standards to publish and retrieve ontologies and metadata about them. Key features of the system include the use of the HTTP protocol following the REST architectural style, the representation of the recorded information about ontologies and the repository information schema using RDF and its schema language RDFS, and the use of URNs to identify ontologies. The use of Web standards for communication between agents and Web-based resources such as ontology repositories enables a more lightweight and open architecture for agent interaction with these resources.