From NeOn Wiki

Cicero

Developed by Klaas Dellschaft, José Monte, Hendrik Engelbrecht
Last Update 06.04.2011
Current Version 1.1.17warning.png"{{{Current Version}}}" cannot be used as a page name in this wiki.
Subversion Cicero Subversion
Bugzilla Cicero Bugzilla
License EPL
Affiliation UKO-LD
Topic Annotation and Documentation
NTKVersionFrom 2.3.2
NTKVersionTo 2.5
Video Cicero Video


The main purpose of the Cicero plugin for the NeOn Toolkit is to keep track of discussions between the developers and users of an ontology. While the actual discussions are held in the Cicero-Wiki on a central server, the plugin allows for establishing links between elements in an ontology (e.g. classes or properties) and discussions that influenced their design. These discussions are then used by the ontology developers for understanding the design rationale of specific ontology elements. In general, one can distinguish two different cases in which argumentation plays an important role in enabling collaboration between the participants of an ontology engineering project (this includes the developers but also the future users of an ontology):

  • First, there are activities during which argumentation data is actively created, e.g. by discussions between the participants. In this case, the argumentation framework has the role of structuring the discussion process, helping in systematically exploring possible solutions and capturing the pro and contra arguments. Argumentation support is then a means of having more efficient discussion and decision taking processes. The most important activities of an ontology engineering project during which discussion data may be actively created are the ontology specification, ontology conceptualisation, ontology formalisation and ontology implementation phases.
  • Second, there are activities where previously recorded discussions are used for understanding the design rationale of elements in the ontology network. Besides the previously mentioned activities, this may especially useful during reusing or re-engineering ontological resources, or during the alignment with other ontologies.

The recorded discussions help in keeping track of the design rationale all the way through the ontology engineering process, and keeping the design rationale up to date by amending it with additional arguments. In general, supporting the argumentation process is important in each situation where either several users collaboratively decide an issue or where a user by himself creates an ontology element that should be later used as input for the activity to be developed by another user. In the latter case, the collaboration is facilitated by enhanced and more complete ontology documentation.

Cicero 1.1.15 (for NTK 2.3.2)

Cicero 1.1.16 (for NTK 2.4)

Cicero 1.1.17 (for NTK 2.5)