Ontologies and databases

Abstract

After an introduction where the notion of ontology will be introduced in a rigorous way as a set of constraints over legal database instances playing the role of a conceptual model or of a set of dependencies , the tutorial will be divided in three parts. In the first part, we will discuss, mostly driven by examples, the role of ontologies in information systems design and the advantages and the challenges when adopting a formal approach based on logics. In the second part, a real-world tool for ontology design will be used to see the "logic" in action. In the third and most important part, we will discuss the use for information access of ontologies in data intensive scenarios based on database technologies, based on a scenario where a logic-based ontology mediates between the user information need and the data structured in the source database. The tutorial will emphasise the advantages of adopting a logic-based approach to the use of ontologies in data intensive applications, and the challenges that the research should still face to make this approach feasible and scalable in association with current database technology. The audience can be of both database researchers and practitioners, since I will try to explain all the concepts through examples and the central demo, although the concepts that the audience will at the end get will be non-trivial ones. The main goal of this tutorial is to let the audience understand haw these novel technologies are non-trivial, but useful in perspective and worthwhile researching; I will also show that there are already some data intensive scenarios where a rigorous ontology-based approach is already applicable with success; at the same time, I will warn about the wrong usages of ontology-based technologies.