A metamodel for supporting interoperability in heterogeneous ontology networks

Abstract

Ontologies are central artifacts in modern information systems. Ontology networks consider the coexistence of different ontology models in the same conceptual space. It is relevant that computational systems specified with distinct models based on different methods, as well as divergent metaphysical assumptions, exchange data to interoperate one with the other. However, there is a lack of techniques to enable the adequate conciliation among models. In this paper, we propose and formalize a metamodel to enable the construction of data models aiming to support the interoperability at the technical level. We present the use of our metamodel to conciliate, without explicit transformations, Ontology Charts from Organizational Semiotics with Semantic Web OWL ontologies and less structured models such as soft ontologies. Our results indicate the possibility of identifying an entity from one model into another, enabling data exchange and interpretation in heterogeneous ontology network.