Extension Rules for Ontology Evolution within a Conceptual Modelling Tool

Abstract

Ontology development and maintenance are complex tasks, so automatic tools are essential for a successful integration between the modeller’s intention and the formal semantics in an ontology. Never- theless, tools need to provide a way to capture the intuitive structures inherent to the conceptual modelling and to focus on ontology elements currently being refactored by abstracting the user from the whole ontol- ogy without losing consistency. This can be done by means of a set of extension rules that identify elements from an ontology and suggest pos- sible consistent evolutions. Rules guide the development of ontologies by taking source elements and refactoring. In this paper, we present a small catalogue of extension rules to cover these identified requirements and thus to be integrated into a tool for ontological modelling as built- in reasoning services. Each rule is defined and analysed by considering different theories of design patterns.