ONTOLOGIES AND THEIR ROLE IN THE SEMANTIC WEB

Ontology based Knowledge Representation:

The ontology and ontology languages may be viewed as one of the important technology in semantic
web. Ontology can be described as formal allotment of conceptualization band to domain. This
implies it provides the description of concepts and their corresponding relationships. In particular,
the ontologies are designed as domain models that broadly appease or satisfy two special
characteristics signifying the semantics. They are:

1. Ontologies are expressed in formal languages with a well-defined semantics.

The first point underlines that ontology needs to be modelled using languages with a formal
semantics such languages include RDF and OWL. These languages are treated as most frequently
used languages in semantic web. These languages contain those models which are preferred by term
ontology.

2. Ontologies build upon a shared understanding within a community.

This understanding represents an agreement among members of the community over the concepts
and relationships that are present in a domain and their usage.

RDF and OWL, the ontology languages, have standardized syntaxes and logic-based formal
semantics. RDF and OWL are the languages most commonly used on the Semantic Web, and in fact
when using the term ontology many practitioners refer to domain models described in one of these
two languages. The second point reminds as that there is no such thing as a personal ontology. For
example, the schema of a database or a UML class diagram that we have created for the design of
our own application is not ontology. It is a conceptual model of a domain, but it is not shared: there
is no commitment toward this schema from anyone else but us.

Glossaries

A glossary is a partial dictionary, a list with explanations of technical or abstruse terms, a collection
of glosses. A gloss is a synonym or explanation inserted between the lines or in the margin to
explain difficult words in a text. A glossary for a particular problem or domain is a list of the special
terms that are used there. A glossary is a partial dictionary in that it does not include words that are
used in their ordinary senses, only those that are either special words not used in ordinary life or
that are used with a special meaning in this context. A good glossary defines every word and phrase
that is used with special meaning, and gives these definitions in terms of ordinary words and in
terms of other glossary terms.

An ontology consists of several components:

 a glossary of concepts (as in the voting example)

 a sub-concept hierarchy of those concepts
 an instance-part hierarchy of those concepts
 properties associated with each concept (an instance-property relationship).
 other relationships between concepts
 cardinality constraints on relationships, and functions from one concept to another.
Ontologies and Glossaries: An example:

Let us consider the concept of vehicles . The glossary for the vehicle class can be defined as follows;

Vehicles:

 Concepts vehicle, car, bicycle, wheel, engine, model year, license number, license plate
defined in glossary.
 Sub-concept hierarchy includes: car is a sub-concept of vehicle (so, every car is also by
definition a vehicle).
 Instance-part hierarchy includes: cars consist of wheels, an engine, and some other things
(so, every car has wheels and an engine).
 Properties include: a car has a model year.
 Other relationships include: each license plate corresponds to a separate license number.
 Cardinality and functions include: every bicycle has exactly two wheels, cars have at most
one license number; given a license number, it is possible to determine what car (if any)
corresponds to it.

An ontology adds more information that is not present in a glossary. This additional information
provides for more informative problem descriptions. It also makes it easier to check that the
glossary is correct, by giving paths by which we can try out what we have so far. For example,

 Since car is a sub-concept of vehicle, every car must be a vehicle, and some vehicles are
not cars.
 Since wheels are parts of cars, every car has wheels, and some wheels are parts of cars.
 Since cars have license numbers, some license numbers belong to cars, and some vehicles
have license numbers
 Since cars have at most one license number, there is no car that has two license numbers
(this seems close but questionable), and there could be a car that has no license number.

Semantic networks are essentially graphs that show also how terms are related to each other.

The above example of vehicle can be depicted as:

Where the meaning for the different connections are mentioned as below:
Deciding the kind of Relationships

Once you have decided that two concepts T and t are related, you need to decide what kind of
relationship they have. One way to decide is to consider the following questions, in sequence:

 Is every t a T? Then t is a sub-concept of T.

 (It must not be possible for any t not to also be a T.)
 Does every T contain a t as a component part of it? Then T and t have an instance-part
relationship.
 (T and t must be the same sort of concept: both are physical objects, or both are
mathematical concepts, or ....)
 (It must not be possible for a particular t to be part of more than one T at the same time; if it
is possible, then probably a t is a property of a T rather than a component part.)
 Is every T described by a t ? Then t is a property of T. (It must not be possible for any T to not
have a t that describes it.)
 Are T and t related, but not in any of the ways listed above? Then t is just related to T.

Because the hierarchical sub-concept and instance-part relationships are transitive, you do not need
to specify them across more than one level of hierarchy; for example, if "Toyota Prius" is a sub-
concept of "Toyota", and "Toyota" is a sub-concept of "car", you need not also say that "Toyota Prius"
is a sub-concept of "car", because it is already implied. Similarly, if "tire" is a part of "wheel", and
"wheel" is a part of "car", you need not say that "tire" is a part of "car" because this is also already
implied.
Understanding Relationships:

Relations are inherited down the sub-concept hierarchy, and these do not need to be explicitly stated
either. For example, "car" is related to "model-year", so you need not say that "Toyota Prius" is
related to "model-year" because this is already implied.

Example: car, Toyota Prius, wheel, model year, driver, goal. What kinds of relationships do these
have?

Every Toyota Prius is a car; there are no Toyota Priuses that are not cars. Therefore "Toyota Prius"
is a sub-concept of "car".

It is not true that every wheel is a car, or vice-versa, so "wheel" and "car" do not have a sub-concept
relationship. However, every car has wheels as some of its component parts, and both cars and
wheels are physical objects, and it is not possible for a wheel to be part of more than one car at the
same time. Therefore "car" and "wheel" have an instance-part relationship, with "wheel" being a part
of "car".

It is not true that every model year is a car, or vice-versa, so "model-year" and "car" do not have a
sub-concept relationship. Nor does every car have a model year as one of its component parts,
because "car" and "model year" are very different kinds of concepts. But every car is described by a
model year, so "model year" is a property of "car".

It is not true that every driver is a car, or vice-versa, so "driver" and "car" do not have a sub-concept
relationship. Nor does every car have a driver as one of its component parts, or vice-versa, so "driver"
and "car" do not have an instance-part relationship. Nor is every car is described by specifying its
driver, or vice versa, at least not in general (a particular driver may drive many cars, although not at
the same time), so neither "driver" nor "car" is a property of the other. However, there is a
relationship between a driver and a car, although it is none of the above kinds.

"Car" and "goal" do not appear to have any relationship. It's not necessary to state this specifically
(unless a reader might be confused and assume some relationship exists), as most concepts are
assumed to be unrelated unless some relationship is stated.

Other Structures of Ontology:

Semantic networks are essentially graphs that show also how terms are related to each other.

Thesauri are richer structures in that they describe a hierarchy between concepts and typically also
allow describing related terms and aliases. Thesauri are also the simplest structures where logic-based
reasoning can be applied: the broadernarrower relationships of these hierarchies are transitive, in
that an item that belongs to a narrower category also belongs to its direct parent and all of its
ancestors.

Folksonomy structures are regarded as weaker models that do not contain any explicit hierarchies,
often comprise extra corresponding to the social context of tags, i.e. the set of users who have been
using them. These structures again success in extracting hierarchies and also relationship among the
tags.
The term lightweight ontology is typically applied to ontologies that make a distinction between
classes, instances and properties, but contain minimal descriptions of them.

On the other hand, heavyweight ontologies allow to describe more precisely how classes are
composed of other classes, and provide a richer set of constructs to constrain how properties can be
applied to classes. At the far end of the spectrum are complex knowledge bases that use the full
expressivity of first order logic (FOL) to define to a great detail the kind of instances a concept may
have and in which cases two instances may be related using a certain relationship. The more
constrained the descriptions of concepts are, the less likely that their meaning will be misinterpreted
by human readers.

The total organization of Ontology in terms of various structures and the levels of complexity is given
below:

Figure. Structure of Ontology

Ontologies and ontology languages for the Semantic Web:

Although the notion of ontologies is independent of the Web, ontologies play a special role in the
architecture of the Semantic Web.

This architecture provides the main motivation for the design of ontology languages for the
Semantic Web: RDF and OWL are both prepared for the distributed and open environment of the
Web. The following figure identifies Ontology in terms of networks.
This architecture provides the main motivation for the design of ontology languages for the Semantic
Web: RDF and OWL are both prepared for the distributed and open environment of the Web.

The Semantic Web will be realized by annotating existing Web resources with ontology-based
metadata and by exposing the content of databases by publishing the data and the schema in one of
the standard ontology languages.

Ontology languages designed for the Semantic Web provide the means to identify concepts in
ontologies using globally unique identifiers (URIs). These identifiers can be used in data sources to
point to a concept or relationship from an external, public ontology. Similar to creating HTML pages
and linking them to existing ones, anyone can create and publish an ontology, which may reference
the concepts in remote ontologies. Much like the hyperlinks among web pages, it is expected that
these references will form a contiguous web linking all knowledge sources across the Web.