Partition-based block matching of large class hierarchies

Abstract

Ontology matching is a crucial task of enabling interoperation between Web applications using different but related ontologies. Due to the size and the monolithic nature, large-scale ontologies regarding real world domains cause a new challenge to current ontology matching techniques. In this paper, we propose a method for partition-based block matching that is practically applicable to large class hierarchies, which are one of the most common kinds of large-scale ontologies. Based on both structural affinities and linguistic similarities, two large class hierarchies are partitioned into small blocks respectively, and then blocks from different hierarchies are matched by combining the two kinds of relatedness found via predefined anchors as well as virtual documents between them. Preliminary experiments demonstrate that the partitionbased block matching method performs well on our test cases derived from Web directory structures. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.