Discovering ontological correspondences through dialogue

Abstract

Whilst significant attention has been given to centralised approaches for aligning full ontologies, limited attention has been given to the problem of aligning partially exposed ontologies in a decentralised setting. Traditional ontology alignment techniques rely on the full disclosure of the ontological models that find the “best” set of correspondences that map entities from one ontology to another. However, within open and opportunistic environments, such approaches may not always be pragmatic or even acceptable (due to privacy concerns). We present a novel dialogue based negotiation mechanism that supports the strategic agreement over correspondences between agents with limited or no prior knowledge of their opponent’s ontology. This mechanism allows both agents to reach a mutual agreement over an alignment through the selective disclosure of their ontological model, and facilitates rational choices on the grounds of their ontological knowledge and their specific strategies. We formally introduce the dialogue mechanism, and discuss its behaviour, properties and outcomes.