JCSE, vol. 3, no. 2, pp.88-89, 2009

DOI:

Preface for the Special Issue on Ontologies and Information Systems for the Semantic Web

Hyoil Han, Ramez Elmasri, Martin Doerr, and Mathias Brochhausen
Drexel University, USA|University of Texas at Arlington, USA|Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH), Greece|Institute of Formal Ontology (IFOMIS), Germany

Abstract: This special issue contains the extended versions of the top three papers presented at the 2nd International Workshop on Ontologies and Information Systems for the Semantic Web (ONISW 2008), which was held in Napa Valley, California, October 30, 2008, in conjunction with the ACM 17th Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM).

The emergence of the World Wide Web has made massive amounts of data available. Data exists in many scattered electronic data sources (e-sources) over the Web. Even though some of the data is in well-organized data sources, several strategies-interoperability and integration across heterogeneous data sources, semantic coordination and conflict resolution -are required for its full exploitation. Semantic Web-enabled applications can potentially produce better results for semantic integration, interoperability and search. In particular, ontologies are widely regarded as the best solution to global information integration and semantic interoperability.

A crucial question is whether ontologies can replace information models. But whereas ontologies work quite well as virtual schemata in mediation systems, they may perform poorly as information models and on the user interface level. On the theoretical side, there is a lack of understanding of the effective relation and interplay of ontological and epistemological features in information models and systems. Furthermore there are still open questions concerning good scientific practice in developing ontologies. On the practical side, there is still a lack of good practice of how to integrate existing information systems into ontology driven applications.

The main objective of the special issue is to bring the highlights of the 2nd International Workshop on Ontologies and Information Systems for the Semantic Web (ONISW 2008) to the audience of Journal of Computing Science and Engineering. ONISW 2008 received 21 submissions from all over the world and selected the top three papers among them, which were extended and reviewed for this special issue of Journal of Computing Science and Engineering. This special issue is to bring together researchers in Information Management interested in the relation between ontology, information models, interoperability and data integration, to present results and to discuss theoretical aspects and good practice. The Call for Papers of ONISW solicited contributions that covered topics such as Ontology and epistemology in information systems, Ontology learning, Semantic interoperability, Ontologybased schema mapping/matching and integration, Ontology mapping tools, languages, and visualization, Schema transformation, Ontology-based data transformation and data migration tools, Ontology-based query mediation, Querying the Semantic Web, Ontology-driven application system and Web service design, and other related areas of research.

This special issue includes three papers from ONISW 2008 which propose data integration solutions to better deploy the Semantic Web.

- An FCA-based Solution for Ontology Mediation
Olivier Cure and Robert Jeansoulin
- Merging Taxonomies under RCC-5 Algebraic Articulations
David Thau, Shawn Bowers and Bertram Ludaescher
- Toward Generic, Immersive, and Collaborative Solutions to the Data Interoperability
Problem which Target End-Users
Arturo Sanchez-Ruiz, Karthikeyan Umapathy and Pat Hayes

The paper entitled “An FCA-based Solution for Ontology Mediation” proposes an ontology mediation solution by creating a merged ontology and optimizing the resulting ontology using FCA. The paper entitled “Merging Taxonomies under RCC-5 Algebraic Articulations” proposes a methodology to merge taxonomies and presents its evaluations using a real-world problem. The paper entitled “Toward Generic, Immersive, and Collaborative Solutions to the Data Interoperability Problem which Target End-Users” addresses data interoperability in a real-world application. Its authors present a “just-in-time” approach for data interoperability.

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