Ontology Module Partition

Ontology Partitioning

The module extraction plugin provides an interactive and iterative approach to extracting relevant subontologies from existing ones. if integrates a number of different “operators” for module extraction, most of them being relatively elementary (extract all the super/sub-classes of a given set of entities, all the other entities they depend on, etc.) The interface for this plugin allows the user to easily combine these different elementary operators in an interactive way. A initial module can be created, using particular parameters, obtaining an initial set of entities to be included. Then another operator can be used, on other entities and other parameters, to reïnAne the module and extend it with other entities, until an appropriate module is created. At any point of the process, previous operations can be un-done and the module cleared. Once a module is created, it can be saved as part of the current ontology project and become itself processable as an ontology (module) to be composed or partitioned using the other modularization plugins.

As for the ontology partitioning plugin, the module extraction plugin can be used in ontological resources reengineering and re-factoring, to reduce considered ontologies into their sub-part relevant for the task/ontology at hand. In addition, this plugin is useful in creating modular ontologies by reuse, reducing potentially big ontologies into focused component that can be easily integrated and reused in an ontology network.