Ontology views: A theoretical perspective

Abstract

Ontologies are the foundation of the Semantic Web (SW) and one of the keys necessary to its success. Conversely, ontology views hold the promise of; (a) provide a manageable portion of a larger ontology for the localized applications and users, (b) enable precise extraction of sub-onlogies of a larger ontology that commits to the main ontology, (c) enable localized customization and usage of the portion of a larger ontology and (d) enable interoperability between large ontology bases and applications. Therefore, it is interesting to look at ontology views and their desired properties, as there exists no agreed upon standard, methodology or formalism to specify, define and materialize ontology views. Thus, in this paper, we elaborate on our own research direction towards proposing a meaningful ontology view formalism and its associated semantics.