Evolution Management for Interconnected Ontologies
Michel C. A. Klein, Heiner Stuckenschmidt, AnHai Doan, Alon Halevy, Natasha Noy · 2003
Mappings between ontologies are easily harmed by changes in the ontologies. In this paper we explain a mechanism to define modular ontologies and mappings in a way that allows for local containment of terminological reasoning. We have also developed a change detection and analysis method that predicts the effect of changes on the concept hierarchy. This method determines whether the changes in one ontology affect the reasoning inside other ontologies or not. Together, these mechanisms allow ontologies to evolve without unpredictable effects on other ontologies. In this paper, we also apply these methods in a case study that is undertaken in a EU IST project.