Atom-B : (semi-)automatic tool for ontology merging in bioinformatics

Abstract

The Semantic Web will work as a whole only if it is possible to reconcile its diversity of ontologies. Ontologies are a key component of any information architecture. They are an explicit specification of the conceptual model underpinning an information domain and are being used in applications to support information and knowledge exchange between organisations. Ontologies have been realised as the key technology to shaping and exploiting information for the effective management of knowledge and for the evolution of The Semantic Web and its applications. Since different people and organizations tend to use different terminologies and structures, several mismatches occur when exchanging information and knowledge. It is an unlikely scenario for everyone to adopt some standard way of constructing ontologies. Hence, there is a need for analyzing and understanding the differences between the different ontologies to be able to combine them into one before making use of them. This thesis first examines some issues involved in merging two different ontologies and in particular, some issues related to the bioinformatics domain. It then gives a brief review and analysis of other similar tools that have been already implemented. Finally, ATOM-B, the tool developed specifically for bioinformatics in this thesis is described in detail. ATOM-B is a semi-Automatic Tool for Ontology Merging in Bioinformatics. ATOM-B helps move more towards the automation of building and merging ontologies, provided a rigorous and structured data resource is available for the desired domain.