MooM -- A Prototype Framework for Management of Ontology Mappings

The heterogeneity of ontologies is a major obstacle to the promised interoperability of knowledge in the Semantic Web. Ontology mappings can help to mitigate the effects by specifying the correspondences between related ontologies. However, the creation of mappings is still complex and time-consuming and therefore it is appealing to discover existing mappings and to reuse them. For reuse, it is essential to understand how a mapping was created and applied. Thus meta-data documenting the lifecycle of an ontology mapping is essential to facilitate management and reuse. Currently the mapping lifecycle is only fragmentary documented and in general the reuse of ontology mappings is insufficiently supported by applications and formats. This paper addresses the question to what extent a semantically expressive ontology-based meta-data model can aid in the discovery, management and reuse of ontology mappings. In particular, experimental results collected from a use-case study on mapping discovery are presented. Based on findings derived, it is shown that semantic rich and effective meta-data describing the ontology mapping lifecycle are crucial for management of ontology mappings. Finally, to address the identified challenges, a framework for management of ontology mappings is outlined.