Using an Ontology to Help Reason about the Information Content of Data

Shuang Zhu, Junkang Feng
DOI: 10.4236/jsea.2010.37073                

Abstract

We explore how an ontology may be used with a database to support reasoning about the “information content” of data whereby to reveal hidden information that would otherwise not derivable by using conventional database query languages. Our basic ideas rest with “ontology” and the notions of “information content”. A public ontology, if available, would be the best choice for reliable domain knowledge. To enable an ontology to work with a database would involve, among others, certain mechanism thereby the two systems can form a coherent whole. This is achieved by means of the notion of “information content inclusion relation”, IIR for short. We present what an IIR is, and how IIR can be identified from both an ontology and a database, and then reasoning about them.

Keywords

Ontology, Information Content of Data

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	T. R. Gruber, “A Translation Approach to Portable Ontologies,” Knowledge Acquisition, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1993, pp. 199-220.
[2]	M. West, “Database and Ontology [Online],” 2008. Wiki HomePage. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Data baseAndOntology
[3]	T. Berners-Lee, J. Hendler and O. Lassila, “The Semantic Web,” Scientific American, Vol. 284, No. 5, 2001, pp. 34-43.
[4]	Z. M. Xu, S. C. Zhang and Y. S. Dong, “Mapping between Relational Database Schema and OWL Ontology for Deep Annotation,” Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE/ WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence, IEEE Computer Society, 2006, pp. 548-552. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1248823.1249215&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=16616566&CFTOKEN=44022427
[5]	C. B. Necib and J. C. Freytag, “Query Processing Using Ontologies,” Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, Springer, Porto, Portugal, 13-17 June 2005.
[6]	K. Munir, M. Odeh and R. McClatchey, “Ontology Assisted Query Reformulation Using the Semantic and Assertion Capabilities of OWL-DL Ontologies,” Proceedings of the 2008 International Symposium on Database Engineering & Applications, ACM, Coimbra, Portugal, 2008, pp. 81-90.
[7]	J. Feng, “The ‘Information Content’ Problem of a Conceptual Data Schema,” Systemist, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1998, pp. 221-233.
[8]	K. Xu, J. Feng and M. Crowe, “Defining the Notion of ‘Information Content’ and Reasoning about it in a Database,” Knowledge and Information Systems, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1 January 2009, pp. 29-59.
[9]	F. I. Dretske, “Knowledge and the Flow of Information,” MIT Press, Cambridge, 1981.
[10]	K. Loney, “Oracle Database 10g: The Complete Reference,” McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., NY, 2004.
[11]	B. C. Grau and B. Motik, “OWL 1.1 Web Ontology Language: Model-Theoretic Semantics. W3C Working Draft [Online],” 8 January 2008. W3C. http://www.w3.org/TR/ owl11-semantics/
[12]	Z. M. Xu and Y. J. Huang, “Conversion from OWL Ontology to Relational Database Schema,” College of Computer and Information Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, 2006.