Knowledge base views

Abstract

The paper introduces an extension to the NeeK language [2, 5]. In the current shape NeeK allows for selection of fragments of a given ontology. The selected part is automatically mapped to a database schema by data views implementation [7]. Experience with a real system using data views has shown that the resulting database schema does not necessarily reflect the needs of the business logic of an application that uses a specific data view. As a work around database views were used on top of data views to modify the schema. Analogous experience with object views, an ontology-object mapping similar to object-relational mappings like Java Persistence API [1], has shown that straight forward mapping of a given ontology is not always sufficient. The modification of NeeK language proposed in the paper allows for minimizing the need of using database views for data views and additional code for of object views. This extension can be seen as a special case of ontology mapping, but focuses on solving particular problems of NeeK rather than being a complete ontology mapping language.