An experimental analysis of tools for ontology evolution management

Abstract

The use of ontology is widely spread among software engineering groups as a way to represent, structure, share and reuse knowledge. As projects progress, the ontological understanding of the domain may change, evolve. New domain concepts may emerge and existing ones may disappear or be updated, causing changes in the ontology. Taking this into account, the management of the ontology evolution/life cycle should be addressed by the ones that adopt them as a way of representing knowledge. This paper provides an analysis of tools related to ontology evolution management focusing on the ones able to identify elementary and complex changes (by grouping elementary changes) that help on externalizing the intention of the user. The main contribution of this analysis is to present the state of the art of tools related to ontology evolution by identifying their strengths and limitations. The results are particularly useful to ontology designers who need to choose a tool to help them to inspect, understand and manage ontology evolution. Besides, we point out several research issues to be addressed in different kinds of research initiatives.