Ontologies pour le Web sémantique

Abstract

Ontologies play a key role in the Semantic Web. In this paper, we would like to come back on the origins of the works on ontologies inside the knowledge engineering community in order to show the assets on which the researchers have developed this concept for the Semantic Web. First, we give some definitions of ontologies in order to clarify the limits of such approaches and to remind the constraints that they have to respect. We can therefore present the current state of the art on the methodologies of ontology construction and question the genericity of the ontologies. Within this framework, we review the results already achieved about the methodologies and the tools for building ontologies while pointing out some problems raised by the Semantic Web. Finally, we try to state the critical issues that the Semantic Web has to face to with respect to ontologies, and to draw the future research directions in order to give a hint of the promising results we can expect in this domain.