Mapping Techniques for an Ontology Network

We are researching a Web integrated reference architecture based on the mediator-wrapper approach. From a conceptual modeling point of view, this mediator is an architectural component defined by a semantic unification model composed of two layers. The lower layer, the specific ontological network (SON), is tailored to a concise application domain. It networks as many specific ontologies (SOs) (URIs of local semantic resources to collect) as necessary through horizontal mappings. The upper layer, the global ontological kernel (GOK), unifies SON's semantics through some global ontologies (GOs) that attach concepts according to a concise unification criterion through vertical mappings. In this context, this paper proposes mapping techniques to integrate these kinds of ontologies and its main contributions are: (1) a homogeneous mapping definition framework, (2) a technique for networking SOs by translating heterogeneous mapping definitions (resulting from current alignment tools) into C-OWL and (3) a unified semantics by means of GOs.