OIL: Ontology Infrastructure to Enable the Semantic Web

Abstract

Currently computers are changing from single isolated devices to entry points into a worldwide network of information exchange and business transactions. Therefore, support in the exchange of data, information, and knowledge is becoming the key issue in computer technology today. Ontologies provide a shared and common understanding of a domain that can be communicated between people and across application systems. Ontologies will play a major role in supporting information exchange processes in various areas. A prerequisite for such a role is the development of a joint standard for specifying and exchanging Ontologies well-integrated with existing web standards. This paper deals with precisely this necessity. We will present OIL which is a proposal for such a standard enabling the semantic web, i.e. information with machine processable semantics. It is based on existing proposals such as OKBC, XOL and RDFS, and enriches them with necessary features for expressing rich ontologies. The paper presents the motivation, underlying rationale, modeling primitives, syntax, semantics, tool environment, and applications of OIL