Ontology mapping approach based on OCL

Abstract

A kind of water resource ontology mapping approach based on OCL is introduced. In this approach, UML together with OCL is chosen as ontology modeling language; set and relation theory is chosen as the theoretical foundation, an ontology model can be represented as a set, an ontology mapping model can be viewed as a relation set between associated sets. The core of this approach is an ontology mapping meta-model which is composed of ontology related elements (Ontology Element, OESet, OESetGroup etc) and mapping related elements (Mapping, MappingClassification etc). Object Constraint Language which is originally used to describe the constraint relationship between the objects, is extended to satisfy these two kinds elements' requirement: OCL for Ontology Related Elements which describes the features of ontology elements and constraints among them, OCL for Mapping Related Elements which describes the features of mapping relation set between two ontology models. Finally, a case study about water resource ontology mapping is discussed. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.