Visualising the effects of ontology changes and studying their understanding with ChImp

Due to the Semantic Web’s decentralised nature, ontology engineers rarely know all applications that leverage their ontology. Consequently, they are unaware of full extent possible consequences changes might cause Our goal is lessen gap between and users by investigating engineers’ understanding changes’ impact at editing time. Hence, this paper introduces Protégé plugin ChImp which we use reach our goal. We elicited requirements for through a questionnaire with engineers. then developed according these it displays given session provides selected information on said effects. For each change, computes number metrics both its materialisation. It those originally loaded beginning current state help understand changes. investigated informativeness materialisation measures, meaning severe impact, also usefulness in an online user study 36 asked participants solve two engineering tasks – without (assigned random order) answer in-depth questions about applied as well measures. found increased participants’ change effects felt better informed. Answers suggest proposed measures were useful informative. learned consider different outcomes severe, but most would define severity based amount compared size. The acknowledged importance quantifying will affect approach ontologies.