Characterizing Modular Ontologies
Sarra Ben Abbès, Andreas Scheuermann, Thomas Meilender, Mathieu d’Aquin · 2012
Abstract. Since large monolithic ontologies are difficult to handle and reuse, ontology modularization has attracted increasing attention. Several approaches and tools have been developed to support ontology modularization. Despite these efforts, a lack of knowledge about characteristics of modularly organized ontologies prevents further development. This work aims at characterizing modular ontologies. Therefore, we analyze existing modular ontologies by applying selected metrics from software engineering in order to identify recurring structures, i.e. patterns in modularly organized ontologies. The contribution is a set of four patterns which characterize modularly organized ontologies.