The Ontolingua Server: a tool for collaborative ontology construction

TLDR

Reusable ontologies are increasingly important for information integration, knowledge‑level interoperation, and knowledge‑base development. The authors developed tools and services that enable geographically distributed groups to reach consensus on shared ontologies and demonstrated their use for ontology agreement and information integration. The system is a web‑based ontology server that lets users publish, browse, create, edit, and assemble ontologies from a module library, leveraging existing protocols and browsing tools to support hundreds of users. Applications show that the tools facilitate consensus on ontologies and enable information integration. The Ontolingua Server is available at http://ontolingua.stanford.edu.

Abstract

Reusable ontologies are becoming increasingly important for tasks such as information integration, knowledge-level interoperation and knowledge-base development. We have developed a set of tools and services to support the process of achieving consensus on commonly shared ontologies by geographically distributed groups. These tools make use of the World Wide Web to enable wide access and provide users with the ability to publish, browse, create and edit ontologies stored on anontology server. Users can quickly assemble a new ontology from a library of modules. We discuss how our system was constructed, how it exploits existing protocols and browsing tools, and our experience supporting hundreds of users. We describe applications using our tools to achieve consensus on ontologies and to integrate information. The Ontolingua Server may be accessed through the URL http://ontolingua.stanford.edu