Natural Language Support for Competency Evaluation of Web-ontologies

Ontology is a key element of the Semantic web that facilitates a common understanding of the structure of knowledge in a domain, and they can back applications such as semantic annotation, consistency checking, search and retrieval. The increasing use of the Semantic web has escalated the demand for competent ontologies. One way to check on the competency of an ontology is by use of competency questions to ascertain whether the ontological commitments are adequate to support its purpose of design. Thus, it is useful to have a competency evaluation supporting tool to assist an ontology engineer to perform this analytic task during the development of an ontology. At present, such support is noticeably weak. It led us to construct a semi-automated competency evaluation supporting tool for the popular Protégé ontology editor. The tool, supported by a natural language program interface to the editor, is currently equipped with simple functions, but has demonstrated its potential as a dependable tool for performing the competency evaluation of web ontologies more effectively, in less time and with reduced effort.