Ontology development: Methodologies for ontology engineering

Abstract

The development of ontologies is comparable in complexity with the development of a complex software. Therefore, it is not enough just to be familiar with the available ontology formalisms to build high-quality ontologies. Development methodologies are needed, which structure the steps of the ontology development process. This chapter will introduce two popular methodologies-On-To-Knowledge and METHONTOLOGY-which show most of the major ideas behind ontology methodologies. Creating the conceptual ontology model-which is one of the steps in the ontology development process-is a highly complex task, and methodologies alone do not provide solutions how to perform it. This chapter therefore also provides an overview of best-practice ontology design principles, which provide standard solutions for the most common problems. A discussion about the modularisation of big ontologies closes this chapter. © 2007 Springer.