Algebraic graph transformations for merging ontologies

Abstract

The conception of an ontology is a complex task influenced by numerous factors like the point of view of the authors or the level of details. Consequently, several ontologies have been developed to model identical or related domains leading to partially overlapping representations. This divergence of conceptualization requires the study of ontologies merging in order to create a common repository of knowledge and integrate various sources of information. In this paper, we propose a formal approach for merging ontologies using typed graph grammars. This method relies on the algebraic approach to graph transformations, SPO (Simple PushOut) which allows a formal representation and ensures the consistence of the results. Furthermore, a new ontologies merging algorithm called GROM (Graph Rewriting for Ontology Merging) is presented.