Three dimensions ontology modification matrix

Abstract

The Semantic Web vision provides the current Web with the necessary infrastructure that allows the computer to process knowledge. One of the cornerstones of this infrastructure is the Ontology. Ontology is a formal way of sharing knowledge via a machine-readable format in order to facilitate the reuse of the knowledge among different parties. For example, Web Ontology Language (OWL) defines the <;owl:import> that allows the reuse of a desired content of another ontology. That is, ontology is expected to be modified in order to be accommodated with added, removed, or refined knowledge in order to fulfill new requirements. Otherwise, it would be outdated; resulting in poor Semantic Web applications. Also, when an ontology is about to be built or chosen, it is worthwhile to make sure that this ontology can be easily modified by other parties in order to suit new tasks. Thus, in this work, a three dimensions ontology modification matrix approach is proposed as an attempt to relatively indicate the complexity of an ontology. This approach can assist in estimating ontology modification efforts and tracking the ontology development process; yet, it is a simple approach. An empirical analysis on this work has performed including real world ontologies. The results indicate that the proposed work is effective and competitive. Moreover, some applications for the proposed work have noted.