Safe and Economic Re-Use of Ontologies: A Logic-Based Methodology and Tool Support

Abstract

Driven by application requirements and using well-understood theoretical results, we describe a novel methodology and a tool for modular ontology design. We support the user in the safe use of imported symbols and in the economic import of the relevant part of the imported ontology. Both features are supported in a well-understood way: safety guarantees that the semantics of imported concepts is not changed, and economic import guarantees that no diference can be observed between importing the whole ontology and importing the relevant part.