What Is Ontology Merging?

Pascal Hitzler, Markus Krötzsch, Marc Ehrig, York Sure

What Is Ontology Merging? – A Category-Theoretical Perspective Using Pushouts

Abstract. Ontology merging describes the process of integrating two (or more) ontologies into a single one. How this is done best is a subject of ongoing research in the Semantic Web community. We propose a generic solution to the question, what the result of a merging should be in the ideal case. We will do this independent of a specific choice of ontology representation language, and thus provide a sort of blueprint for the development of algorithms applicable in practice. Our methods are taken from category theory. More precisely, we will argue that ontology merging is best captured by the notion of categorical pushout. Our paper is a first step towards the development of practically applicable algorithms.

Published at C&02005 (Workshop paper)

Download PDF (last update: July 1 2005)

Citation details

• Pascal Hitzler, Markus Krötzsch, Marc Ehrig, York Sure. What Is Ontology Merging? – A Category-Theoretical Perspective Using Pushouts. In Pavel Shvaiko, Jerome Euzenat, Alain Leger, Deborah L. McGuinness, Holger Wache, eds.: Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Contexts and Ontologies (C&O-05), pp. 104–107. AAAI PressProperty "Publisher" has a restricted application area and cannot be used as annotation property by a user. 2005.