A format for expressing ontology alignment is provided here. Its goal is to be able to express an alignment in a consensual format. It can then be manipulated by various tools which will use it as imput for further alignment methods, transform it into axioms or transformations or compare different alignments.
This is a first format that could be extended for accomodating further needs.
We describe below its source descriptions, its specifications and some implementations.
There are two specifications of the format:
The namespace used by these formats is http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org/heterogeneity/alignment.
The Alignment class describes a partlicular alignment. Its properties are the following:
This class does not currently exists in the format (it exists in its implementation). Currently, the relation is expressed as a string.
There is a JAVA API, extending the OWL API implementing this format.
We have implemented this API and provided tools for:
This API and its implementation could fairly easily be adapted to other representation languages than OWL.
There is a small stand-alone program that parses an alignment and displays it ($CWD is the directory where you are):
$ java -jar lib/procalign file://localhost$$CWD/rdf/onto1.owl file://localhost$CWD/rdf/onto2.owl <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' standalone='no'?> <!DOCTYPE rdf:RDF SYSTEM "align.dtd"> <rdf:RDF xmlns='http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org/heterogeneity/alignment' xmlns:rdf='http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#' xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#'> <Alignment> <xml>yes</xml> <type>11</type> <onto1>file://localhost$CWD/rdf/onto1.owl</onto1> <onto2>file://localhost$CWD/rdf/onto2.owl</onto2> <map> <Cell> <entity1 rdf:resource='http://www.example.org/ontology1#journalarticle'/> <entity2 rdf:resource='http://www.example.org/ontology2#journalarticle'/> <measure rdf:datatype='xsd:float'>0.0</measure> <relation>=</relation> </Cell> </map> </Alignment> </rdf:RDF>