Approximate Query Reformulation for Ontology Integration

This paper proposes an approximate query reformulation framework for integrating heterogeneous ontologies. In order to achieve semantic interoperability in the Semantic Web, multiple ontologies have to be integrated. Ontology integration requires approximation mechanisms, since often no perfectly corresponding ontologies exist. However, most previous research efforts on ontology integration have not provided clear semantics for approximation. We have therefore proposed a framework for approximate query reformulation. In this framework, a query represented in one ontology is reformulated approximately into a query represented in another ontology based on an ontology mapping specification. In this paper, we focus on a fragment of OWL DL and provide a reformulation method for value restrictions and negation.