GenTax: A Generic Methodology for Deriving OWL and RDF-S Ontologies from Hierarchical Classifications, Thesauri, and Inconsistent Taxonomies

Abstract

Abstract. Hierarchical classifications, thesauri, and informal taxonomies are likely the most valuable input for creating, at reasonable cost, non-toy ontologies in many domains. They contain, readily available, a wealth of category definitions plus a hierarchy, and they reflect some degree of community consensus. However, their transformation into useful ontologies is not as straightforward as it appears. In this paper, we show that (1) it often depends on the context of usage whether an informal hierarchical categorization schema is a classification, a thesaurus, or a taxonomy, and (2) present a novel methodology for automatically deriving consistent RDF-S and OWL ontologies from such schemas. Finally, we (3) demonstrate the usefulness of this approach by transforming the two e-business categorization standards eCl@ss and UNSPSC into ontologies that overcome the limitations of earlier prototypes. Our approach allows for the script-based creation of meaningful ontology classes for a particular context while preserving the original hierarchy, even if the latter is not a real subsumption hierarchy in this particular context. Human intervention in the transformation is limited to checking some conceptual properties and identifying frequent anomalies, and the only input required is an informal categorization plus a notion of the target context. In particular, the approach does not require instance data, as ontology learning approaches would usually do.

PCS2OWL: A Generic Approach for Deriving Web Ontologies from Product Classification Systems

“…To create the ontology classes, the PCS2OWL tool relies on the GenTax approach introduced in [20], whereby it is possible to generate a consistent OWL ontology while preserving the taxonomic structure of the original categories in the PCS. In order to do so, the GenTax method creates two OWL classes in the target ontology from each category in the PCS.…”

“…The second is a context-specific class, in our case in the domain of products and services. For a given category on the original PCS identified as "ID", let us refer to the pair of OWL classes that GenTax creates as C ID-gen and C ID-tax, following the naming convention of the original GenTax specification [20].…”

“…The challenges in the conversion 12 http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/ontologies/pcs2owl/gpc/ 13 http://schema.org/ 14 http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/ontologies/pcs2owl/gpc/C 68020100-tax of product classification standards were already discussed in [23,3], whose findings led towards the development of the GenTax algorithm in [20], still a core component of PCS2OWL. The subsequent initial release of the GoodRelations ontology [6] motivated the first transformation of the eCl@ss standard (5.1.4) 15 relying on the GenTax methodology as a GoodRelations compliant ontology.…”

Using BMEcat Catalogs as a Lever for Product Master Data on the Semantic Web

“…Catalog groups are a means to further refine product descriptions. A catalog group system is mapped building up an rdfs:subClassOfhierarchy based on the GenTax algorithm [10], which permits to create meaningful ontology classes for a specific context while at the same time preserving the original hierarchy, i.e. the catalog group taxonomy.…”

Analysing Ontological Structures through Name Pattern Tracking

“…Our research is to some degree similar to projects aiming at converting shallow models such as thesauri or directory headings to more structured and conceptually clean ontologies [3][4][5][6]11]. The main difference lays in our assumption that the ontologies in question are already intended to bear set-theoretical semantics, and that the 'inconsistencies' in naming patterns are due to either sloppy naming (possibly just reflecting shortcut terminology used by domain practitioners) or more serious modelling errors, rather than being an inherent feature of (shallow) models.…”