Triggering Ontology Alignment Revalidation Based on the Degree of Change Significance on the Ontology Concept Level

Abstract

Following a common definition, ontologies can be seen as a formal specification of a conceptualisation. However, it cannot be expected that there will be no changes applied to them. Obviously, any application build on top of some ontology needs to adjust to the introduced alterations. For example, a mapping designated between two ontologies (also called an ontology alignment) is valid only if participating ontologies are fixed. In this paper we present a function that can indicate, whether or not, the aforementioned alignment needs updating, in order to follow modifications done to participating ontologies, and to avoid mapping them again from scratch.