A note on the refinement of ontologies

Abstract

Ontologies have emerged as one of the key issues in information integration and interoperability and in their application to knowledge management and electronic commerce. A trend towards formal methods for ontology management is obvious. This paper discusses a concept which can be expected to be of great importance to formal ontology management, and which is well-known in traditional software development: refinement. We define and discuss ontology refinement, give illustrating examples, and highlight its advantages as compared to other forms of ontology revision. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.