A framework for end-to-end ontology management system

Abstract

An Ontology once developed needs to be kept up-to-date preferably as a collaborative process which will require web based tools. We have developed a large user centered ontology for Sri Lankan agriculture domain to represent agricultural information and relevant knowledge that can be queried in user context. We have generalized our design approach. In doing so we have identified various processes that are required to manage an ontology as a collaborative process. Based on these processes we developed an ontology management system to manage the ontology life cycle. The main processes such as modify, extend and prune the ontology components as required are included. It also has facilities to capture users’ information needs in context for modifications, search domain information, reuse and share the ontological knowledge. This is a semi-automatic ontology management system that helps to develop and manage complex real-world applications based ontologies collaboratively.