Logic-Based Ontology Engineering

Lecturer: Dr.-Ing. Stefan Borgwardt
Tutorials: PD Anni-Yasmin Turhan

Course Description

Ontologies are important tools for structuring the working knowledge of an application domain. They are used to build automated systems that support human domain experts, such as medical practitioners, engineers, and business analysts. Ontology Engineering describes a collection of techniques that support the whole ontology life cycle: the creation of an ontology, forming links with other ontologies, ontology updates, and repairing the ontology.

This lecture introduces students to the field of ontology engineering, from the point of view of the standard ontology language OWL 2. Based on a formalization in description logics, a multitude of logic-based techniques have been developed to support ontology engineers throughout the ontology life cycle. We will discuss a few of them in detail.

It is expected that students are well acquainted with first-order logic. Knowledge of Description Logics and the Semantic Web are helpful, but not required.

Exam

The written exam for the Computational Logic module MCL-ILS (Integrated Logic Systems) will take place on 31 July 2018 in room APB/E005 at 10:00–12:00. Students should register with SCIS for the exam.

In the last tutorial session on 18 July, 13:00–14:30, students can ask questions regarding the lecture and the exam preparations.

Organization

The lectures and tutorials take place in room APB/E005 on Wednesdays 9:20–10:50 (2. DS) and 13:00–14:30 (4. DS). The distribution of lectures and tutorials can be found in the table below. During the semester, there may be changes to this schedule on short notice. Be sure to check this page regularly for updates.

Exercise sheets will be made available on this page approximately one week before each tutorial. For the practical assignments, students are expected to bring their own laptops to run the required programs (see below).

Schedule

Installing Protégé and Plug-ins

For some practical exercises, the Java-based ontology editor Protégé is used. Students should install Protégé Desktop version 5.2.0 from the web page before attending the tutorials. The tutorials include an introduction to working with Protégé. Additional documentation and support can be found here.

For some of the exercises, additional plugins need to be installed in Protégé. Some of them can be downloaded from within Protégé under "File" -> "Check for plugins...". Others need to be installed manually, by copying the downloaded jar file into the plugins directory below the directory where Protégé is installed (and restarting Protégé). On a Mac, the plugins folder is hidden in the Protégé.app bundle, and can be opened in Finder by right-clicking on Protégé.app, selecting "Show Package Contents", and navigating to "Contents" -> "Java" -> "plugins".

A plugin typically provides an additional Reasoner, View, or Tab for Protégé, which can be enabled under "Reasoner" and "Window" -> "Views"/"Tabs". Here is a list of plugins that are used in the tutorials:

• ELK
• Pellet
• Fact++
• VOWL
• OWLAx
• DL-Learner

Lecture Material

The lecture slides will be made available here:

• Introduction to Ontology Engineering, OWL 2, and Description Logics (last version: 16.04.18)
• Ontology Creation (last version: 02.05.18)
• Ontology Integration (last version: 13.06.18)
• Ontology Maintenance (last version: 14.07.18)

SWS/Modules/Exams

The lecture comprises 4 SWS (2/2/-). It is offered as part of the following modules:

• Master Computational Logic:
  MCL-ILS (written exam, together with Deduction Systems, 120 minutes)
  The lecture is mandatory for this module.
• Master Informatik, Diplom Informatik:
  INF-BAS6 (oral module exam over 8 SWS, 30 minutes)
  INF-VERT6 (oral module exam over 10 SWS, 40 minutes)
  INF-PM-FOR (literature research and oral exam, 15 minutes)
  Please contact us at the beginning of the semester if you plan to visit the lecture as part of the module INF-PM-FOR.
• Bachelor Informatik:
  INF-B-510 or INF-B-520 (oral exam, 20 minutes)

Literature

Introduction to Ontology Engineering, OWL 2, and Description Logics

• Steffen Staab, Rudi Studer. Handbook on Ontologies. Springer-Verlag, 2009.

• Thomas Gruber: A Translation Approach to Portable Ontology Specifications. Knowledge Acquisition, 5(2):199–220, 1993.
• ISWC Tutorial: An Introduction to the Semantic Web. 2007.
• Mizoguchi Laboratory: Ontology Engineering: Tutorial. 2004.

• Pascal Hitzler, Markus Krötzsch, Bijan Parsia, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Sebastian Rudolph: OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Primer. W3C, 2012.

• Markus Krötzsch, František Simančík, Ian Horrocks: Description Logics. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 29(1):12–19, 2014.
  Electronic version on arXiv.org
• Franz Baader, Carsten Lutz, Ian Horrocks, and Uli Sattler: An Introduction to Description Logic. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
  Electronic access from within the network of TU Dresden
• Franz Baader, Diego Calvanese, Deborah McGuinness, Daniele Nardi, and Peter F. Patel-Schneider: The Description Logic Handbook: Theory, Implementation, and Applications. Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 2007.

Ontology Creation

• Natalya F. Noy, Deborah L. McGuinness: Ontology Development 101: A Guide to Creating Your First Ontology. Stanford University, 2000.
• Robert Stevens, Margaret Stevens, Nicolas Matentzoglu, Simon Jupp: Manchester Family History Advanced OWL Tutorial. University of Manchester, 2013.

• Sean Bechhofer, Uli Sattler: COMP62342: Ontology Engineering for The Semantic Web. University of Manchester, 2016.

• James J. Odell: Six different kinds of composition. Journal of Object Oriented Programming, 5(8):10-15, 1994.

• Jens Lehmann, Johanna Völker: Perspectives on Ontology Learning. Studies on the Semantic Web, volume 18. IOS Press, 2014.

• Jens Lehmann, Pascal Hitzler: Concept learning in description logics using refinement operators. Machine Learning 78:203–250, 2010.

Ontology Integration

• Jérôme Euzenat, Pavel Shvaiko: Ontology Matching. Springer-Verlag, 2013.
• Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative
• Karsten Lehmann, Anni-Yasmin Turhan: A Framework for Semantic-Based Similarity Measures for \(\mathcal{ELH}\)-Concepts. In Proceedings of JELIA, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 7519, Springer-Verlag, 2012.

Ontology Maintenance

• Matthew Horridge, Bijan Parsia, Ulrike Sattler: Explaining Inconsistencies in OWL Ontologies. In Proceedings of SUM, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 5785, Springer-Verlag, 2009.
• Stefan Schlobach, Zhisheng Huang, Ronald Cornet, Frank van Harmelen: Debugging Incoherent Terminologies. Journal of Automated Reasoning 39(3):317–349, 2007.
• Franz Baader, Rafael Peñaloza, Boontawee Suntisrivaraporn: Pinpointing in the Description Logic \(\mathcal{EL}^+\). In Proceedings of KI, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 4667, Springer-Verlag, 2007.
• Boris Konev, Carsten Lutz, Dirk Walther, Frank Wolter: Formal Properties of Modularisation. In Modular Ontologies: Concepts, Theories and Techniques for Knowledge Modularization, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 5445, Springer-Verlag, 2009.
• Bernardo Cuenca Grau, Ian Horrocks, Yevgeny Kazakov, Ulrike Sattler: Extracting Modules from Ontologies: A Logic-Based Approach. In Modular Ontologies: Concepts, Theories and Techniques for Knowledge Modularization, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 5445, Springer-Verlag, 2009.
• Chiara Del Vescovo, Pavel Klinov, Bijan Parsia, Ulrike Sattler, Thomas Schneider, Dmitry Tsarkov: Empirical Study of Logic-Based Modules: Cheap Is Cheerful. In Proceedings of ISWC, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 8218, Springer-Verlag, 2013.