On the capabilities and limitations of OWL regarding typecasting and ontology design pattern views

Abstract

In ontology engineering, particularly when dealing with heterogeneous domains and their subfields, legacy data, various data models, existing standards, code lists, and so forth, there is a frequently recurring need to express certain types of axioms that allow diverse representational choices interoperate. Some of these axioms, which we call typecasting axioms, point to limitations of the Web Ontology Language (OWL), while others require best practice guides for the community. Here, we introduce these typecasting axioms and elaborate how such axioms can help the development of data integration using ontology and ontology patterns. We then conclude with a brief catalog of open research problems motivated by typecasting axioms, which may be of potential interest to both application developers and researchers working on logical foundations of OWL.