[protege-discussion] mapping ontologies

[Jonathan Carter]

Hi Nick,

Interesting idea and using a Protege ontology to capture how the other  
2 ontologies map sounds like a good approach.
What you'd be doing is effectively defining some sort of master  
ontology that the other two map to - perhaps some sort of canonical  
form.
Another interesting thing with this is that you need to be careful  
about semantics. I know was just an example, but in your example, the  
concept of "Market" doesn't feel like the same as "Location", even  
though instances of each might actually have the same name, so LA  
could be a Market but also there could be an LA Location. Indeed  
Markets might have Locations associated with them.

In terms of doing this, I actually haven't done this sort of thing in  
the way that you describe. Rather, the class hierarchy I use enables  
me to define terms like Market and Location as Instances (and  
instances of these as instances...) and whether these are equivalent  
is managed by the class structure we've defined.
However, I really like the idea of using an intermediary Protege  
ontology to define the mapping between the two models in your  
organisation. You could then use this, combined with the two  
organisations' ontologies to report on things like an overall picture  
across the two.
Additionally, you could even bring the two local ontologies together  
in the mapping ontology so that the local terms are sub-classes of the  
'canonical' ontology. e.g. You might define a Sales Territory class in  
the canonical ontology which has both Market and Location as sub- 
classes.
Something like Prompt may have some things that will help with merging  
the two local ontologies into this overall one, or alternatively it  
could be worth looking at the Project inclusion capability (that I  
have had very little exposure to) Manage Included Projects / Merge  
Included Projects.

Just some ideas.

Hope this helps

Regards

Jonathan
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On 25 Nov 2008, at 21:57, Nick Berry wrote:

> Has anyone ever used Protege to map one ontology to another?  For  
> instance, one part of my organization uses "Markets" (like Greater  
> Los Angeles) whereas another part uses "Locations" (cities, states,  
> and store locations).
>
> Thanks,
> Nick
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