1. Utility Evaluation of Tools for Collaborative Development
and Maintenance of Ontologies
Alex Norta1, Roman Yangarber1, Lauri Carlson2
Department of Computer Science1
Department of Computer Science2
University of Helsinki
VORTE-MOST'10, October 27th, 2010

2. Agenda Introduction and research question
Ontology tool application context
ContentFactory project context
specific ontology-features management in context
functional and non-functional requirements specification
Evaluation of ontology tools
method of evaluation
tool-triage result
results for functional- and non-functional evaluation
Conclusions and future work

3. Introduction Context of evaluation eBS specifications in two formats
electronic business services (eBS) for B2B collaboration
eBS specifications in two formats
human readable and informal specification
machine readable and formal specification
Ambiguities in both eBS representations must be resolved
Need for ontology tools to manage complex situation
Intelligent broker systems for eBS management
Part of service-oriented architecture (SOA) in clouds

4. Introduction: the research question
Many ontology tools exist for developing and managing ontologies
collaborative functionality essential for eBS-based B2B
No survey satisfactory for our application context
to the best of our knowledge
A targeted evaluation fills that gap
carefully extracted functional and non-functional requirements
evaluation of this method adaptable to comparable studies in other tool application contexts

5. Context: ContentFactory

6. Context: specific ontology-management features

7. Context: functional and non-functional requirements

8. Evaluation: method Tool-utility formula Criteria For our context
u: overall tool utility
criteria classes: T (triage), M (must), N (need), C (nice)
Θ: respective weight ΘT>ΘM>ΘN>ΘC
For our context
{3|2|1|0} for criteria classes
{4|3|2|1} for respective weights
T is knockout criteria

9. Evaluation: tool-triage result
NeOn
state-of-the-art, open source, multiple-platform
full ontology-engineering lifecycle support
Eclipse-based and plugins possible
Protége
well established, open source, for collaborative ontology development
ontology export including RDF(S),OWL, XML
CmapTools Ontology Editor
intuitive modeling notation for laymen: content maps
roundtrip translation available for ontology representation
TopBraid Composer
enterprise-class ontology engineering environment
published API for client/server or browser-based solutions
free-edition considered for evaluation
HOZO
Ontology Editor: provides graphical interface
Onto-Studio: helps users with ontology design from technical documents
Ontology Server: manages built ontologies and models
OntoBroker
omited because subset (minus inference machine) is foundation for NeOn

10. Evaluation: functional evaluation result

11. Evaluation: functional evaluation result

12. Conclusions Ontology-tool evaluation performed
for context of ContentFactory project with different human and ontological languages
ontology tool for eBS brokering for B2B
utility of tools for functional and non-functional requirements
Triage reduces set of ontology tools
collaborative ontology management must be supported
tools must be freely available and maintained
Utility evaluation by tool developers or with feedback
result checked by all
NeOn, Protége, CmapTools Ontology, TopBraid Composer, HOZO
All tools share OWL-DL as ”ligua franca”
Strengths-based combination of tools, e.g.:
CmapTools for allowing laymen collaborative ontology development via content maps editing
NeOn for managing OWL-DL representation of content maps
Protége superior if security of OWL-DL ontology important
HOZO for multi-perspective ontology visualization, Asian language support

13. Future work Study how to take advantage of ontology-tool combinations
prevent implementation need of new functionality
The evaluation method may be repeated and experimented with in other application context
Development and research input based on study
to cover pointed out gaps of functional and non-functional requirement coverage

14. Thank you!
Questions, comments?