A Model Theoretic Semantics for Ontology Versioning

Abstract. We show that the Semantic Web needs a formal semantics for the various kinds of links between ontologies and other documents. We provide a model theoretic semantics that takes into account ontology extension and ontology versioning. Since the Web is the product of a diverse community, as opposed to a single agent, this semantics accommodates different viewpoints by having different entailment relations for different ontology perspectives. We discuss how this theory can be practically applied to RDF and OWL and provide a theorem that shows how to compute perspective-based entailment using existing logical reasoners. We illustrate these concepts using examples and conclude with a discussion of future work.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: SEMWEB
• Authors: Jeff Heflin, Zhengxiang Pan
• Keywords: Account Ontology Extension, Ontology, Semantics, SEMWEB 2004