Document Information
| Project Title: | Requirements for an Ontologies Mapping Tool |
Brief Project Description: | Document the functional and non-functional requirements for an Ontologies Mapping Tool. V1.1 incorporates feedback from the Steering committee. 21st Dec 2015 V1.2 edits have been made to align with the RFI process to evaluate existing tools. |
| Prepared by: | Ian Harrow the Project Team for The Pistoia Alliance Ontologies Mapping Project team |
| Date: | 28th April 2016 |
| Version: | 1.2 |
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The mapping tool must be currently available through a web site. This also means it must be evident that the tool is maintained by a team of developers. There must be an active contact point or mailing list. There must also be a statement of maintenance of the tool corresponding to the period of investment.
3. Standalone and web service
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- Ontology classes and/or instances (names) are displayed as a simple list which can be sorted alphabetically.
- Ontology classes and/or instances (names) are shown as pillars (vertical) and layers (horizontal).
- Ontology classes and/or instances (names) are displayed as a hierarchical tree which can also show relationships in an expandable form.
- Ontology classes and/or instances (names) are displayed as a two dimensional matrix.
- Show any available metadata for source ontologies or mappings (e.g. version, data, contact etc.)
- Show ontology metrics (e.g. number of classes, properties etc.)
- Visualise areas of overlap between source ontologies
The purpose of this high level visualisation is to enable the user to understand ontology coverage and delineation. An example of ontology delineation is reference vs. application ontologies where the latter will re-use parts of reference ontologies. Application ontologies may span multiple domains to support a particular activity such as experimental investigation.
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The alignment editor will support the facility to accept or reject the suggested mappings between two matching ontologies. Simple equivalence matching between ontologies are likely to be based on similarity of URLs/Labels. In addition, numerous other ontology matching algorithms will be incorporated as described in section 2.
1.2.4. Tracking of modifications
Manual modification to an existing match should be stored with some indication of provenance. This is for two reasons: we want to keep this "curated" information if a new algorithm is run. We want to capture some idea of the context or assumptions under which the mapping was provided.
1.2.5. Definition of context
We should be able to specify a context under which a mapping makes sense. Contexts are probably hard to define, but some indication of the scope for which some mapping is designed would be useful and stored as metadata for the mapping.
2. Framework
2.1. Workflow and Evaluation
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The workflow begins with characterising the need, selecting existing mappings, selecting appropriate matching algorithms (matchers), running them, evaluating the results and correcting choices made (matchers and parameters).
There is also an implicit link between exploitation and the mapping process. Once a mapping is shared with users, they can generate external feedback which must be gathered. This external input will be evaluated and used to improve the mapping through the alignment editor which should accept this feedback easily (e.g. options like correct or annotate mapping elements).
Figure 3: The workflow for ontology mapping methodology
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The tool will provide metrics for evaluation of imported mappings and those generated by the ontology matching algorithm(s) which is displayed in the mapping alignments editor as shown in Figure 3. Evaluation will be performed automatically or by manual inspection where graphical display of alignment is important. Manual evaluation would be expected to have some clearly defined criteria for objectiveness. Automated evaluation requires access to a suitable reference mapping (not used by the matching algorithm) and extracting samples from the alignment results and computing measures like precision, recall and inconsistency to give an approximation of correctness and completeness. The mapping tool evaluation metrics will support assessment of precision and recall with respect to "locally provided" gold standards. This will be tested by the RFI process for evaluation of existing mapping tools.
Element Similarity
The tool will implement a recognised measure of similarity between two sets of elements. For example, the Hamming distance counts the join correspondences with regard to the overall correspondence of both sets.
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- date of rendering the mapping alignment
- method for ontology matching with version and parameters
- description of purpose
- creator name
- curator identity and multiple contributions
- alignment measures
- manual curation and confidence
- any limitations of use
- names of the aligned, source ontologies
- type of alignment (e.g. 1:1 or *.* correspondence)
- seed alignment from which the alignment is derived
- the application context
- relevant external sources and references
- any dependency across the mapping alignment
- context and application supported by the mapping
- link to a community resource to support the mapping
- provenance and rationale for any manual curation
- ability to extend the metadata model, as required
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