In order to tackle the need of sharing knowledge within and across organisational boundaries, the last decade has seen researchers both in academia and industry advocating for the use of ontologies as a means for providing a shared understanding of common domains. But with the generalised use of large distributed environments such as the World Wide Web came the proliferation of many di#erent ontologies, even for the same or similar domain, hence setting forth a new need of sharing---that of sharing ontologies. In addition, if visions such as the Semantic Web are ever going to become a reality, it will be necessary to provide as much automated support as possible to the task of mapping di#erent ontologies. Although many e#orts in ontology mapping have already been carried out, we have noticed that few of them are based on strong theoretical grounds and on principled methodologies. Furthermore, many of them are based only on syntactical criteria. In this paper we present a theory and method for automated ontology mapping based on channel theory, a mathematical theory of semantic information flow.

management

Abstract. Semantic interoperability has become a key issue for realizing the Semantic Web in its full potential. However, there is a lot of controversy regarding the meaning and scope of the term and scarce formal approaches to the problem of semantic heterogeneity. In this paper, we discuss these approaches and propose a formalisation of semantic interoperability based on the Barwise-Seligman theory of information flow. We argue for a theoretical framework that favours the analysis and implementation of semantic interoperability scenarios. We present an example case of such a scenario where our framework has been applied as well as variations of it in the domain of ontology mapping. 1

Interoperability between disparate systems in open, distributed environments has become the quest of many practitioners in a variety of fields. Web-based educational systems are not an exception, but provide some unique characteristics. In this perspectives paper we argue for the role of multiple ontologies in support of Web-based educational systems and speculate on the e#orts involved in achieving interoperable systems. We draw our criticism from our involvement in interoperability tasks between ontologies for Semantic Web systems and elaborate on the role of communities of users in interoperability scenarios.

Abstract. The use of highly abstract mathematical frameworks is essential for building the sort of theoretical foundation for semantic integration needed to bring it to the level of a genuine engineering discipline. At the same time, much of the work that has been done by means of these frameworks assumes a certain amount of background knowledge in mathematics that a lot of people working in ontology, even at a fairly high theoretical level, lack. The major purpose of this short paper is provide a (comparatively) simple model of semantic integration that remains within the friendlier confines of first-order languages and their usual classical semantics and logic.

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”