System and method for automatically refining ontology within specific context

• US 7,925,637 B2
• Filed: 09/12/2007
• Issued: 04/12/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 09/14/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Wang, Chen, Ma, Li, Pan, Yue
• Primary Examiner(s): Wu; Yicun
• Assistant Examiner(s): Mamillapalli; Pavan
• Application Number:
  US11/853,852
• Publication Number:
  US 20080071731A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,308 Days
• Field of Search: 707/104.1, 707/1, 707/102, 707/103.R, 707/690, 707/692
• US Class Current: 707/690
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/367 Ontology

Abstract

The present invention provides a system and method for automatically refining ontology within a specific context. The system comprises: a rich context extractor for discovering a semantics relationship conflict existing between an original ontology schema and application data; and an ontology schema and mapping refiner for refining the original ontology schema based on the semantics relationship conflict discovered by the rich context extractor, and creating a new mapping between the refined ontology schema and a data schema of the application data. According to the invention, users can save a lot of work of manual refinement, since the ontology schema is automatically refined based on contexts in the application data.

Claims

1. A system for automatically refining ontology within a specific context, comprising:

a rich context extractor for discovering a semantics relationship conflict existing between an original ontology schema and application data; and

an ontology refiner for resolving the semantics relationship conflict by transforming the original ontology schema into a refined ontology schema by transforming an original relationship property in the original ontology schema into a new relationship class in the refined ontology schema and creating at least two new relationship properties under the new relationship class based upon a portion of the data schema that caused the semantics relationship conflict to exist;

wherein;

the ontology refiner further resolves the semantics relationship conflict by automatically populating at least two new relationship properties under the new relationship class with data from a portion of the application data that caused the semantics relationship conflict to occur.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein after transforming the original relationship property having the conflict into the new relationship class, the ontology refiner further uses a path expression to embody an impacted sub-property relation in the refined ontology schema, wherein the path expression is obtained by combining relationship properties between classes bridged by the new relationship property and the new relationship class.

3. The system according to claim 1, wherein the ontology refiner creates a new mapping between the refined ontology schema and the data schema of the application data by mapping the new relationship property and the new relationship class onto a portion the data schema corresponding to the resolved semantics relationship conflict.

4. The system according to claim 1, wherein a representation model of the ontology is resource description framework model or a web ontology language model.

5. The system according to claim 1, wherein the storage format of the application data is a relational table in a relational database or the eXtended Markup Language.

6. A method for automatically refining ontology within a specific context, comprising steps of:

a) discovering a semantics relationship conflict existing between an original ontology schema and application data;

b) transforming the original ontology schema into a refined ontology schema by transforming an original relationship property in the original ontology schema into a new relationship class in the refined ontology schema,

c) creating at least two new relationship properties under the new relationship class based upon a portion of the data schema that caused the semantics relationship conflict to exist;

d) creating a new mapping between the refined ontology schema and a data schema of the application data; and

e) automatically populating at least two new relationship properties with data from a portion of the application data that caused the semantics relationship conflict to occur.

7. The method according to claim 6, further comprising the following step:

e) creating a path expression to be used to present an impacted sub-property relation in the refined ontology schema, wherein the path expression is obtained by combining relationship properties between classes bridged by the new relationship property and the new relationship class.

8. The method according to claim 6, wherein a representation model of the ontology is resource description framework model or a web ontology language model.

9. The method according to claim 6, wherein the storage format of the application data is a relational table in a relational database or the eXtended Markup Language.

10. A system for converting application data, stored according to an application data schema, into ontologically-organized data stored according to an ontology schema, with the ontology schema including a plurality of defined relationship classes, with the ontology schema further including a plurality of defined potential relationships, with the ontologically-organized data including a plurality of relationship class instances respectively corresponding to defined relationship classes of the ontology schema, and with the ontologically-organized data further including a plurality of relationship instances respectively relating pairs of relationship class instances, the system comprising:

a rich context extractor for automatically discovering a duplicate-relationship-instance conflict occurring between a pair of conflicted relationship class instances, the duplicate-relationship-instance conflict is considered to occur when conversion of the application data into ontologically-organized data would lead to at least two identical relationship instances between the pair of conflicted relationship class instances; and

an ontology refiner for resolving the duplicate-relationship-instance conflict by automatically refining the ontology schema into a refined ontology schema by automatically adding a new defined relationship class to the ontology schema based upon a portion of the application data that caused the duplicate-relationship-instance conflict to occur;

wherein;

the ontology refiner further resolves the duplicate-relationship-instance conflict by automatically populating at least two new relationship class instances in the ontologically-organized data organized under the new defined relationship class of the refined ontology schema with data from a portion of the application data that caused the duplicate-relationship-instance conflict to occur.

11. The system of claim 10 wherein the ontology refiner further resolves the duplicate-relationship-instance conflict by automatically assigning new relationship instances between:

the at least two new relationship instances and a first conflicted relationship class instance of the pair of conflicted relationship class instances; and

the at least two new relationship instances and a second conflicted relationship class instance of the pair of conflicted relationship class instances.