Guidelines to Study Differences in Expressiveness between Ontology Specification Languages: A Case Of Study

Abstract

We focus on our experiences on translating ontologies between two ontology languages, FLogic and Ontolingua, in the framework of Methontology and ODE. Rather than building "ad hoc" translators between languages or using KIF, our option consists of translating through ODE intermediate representations. So, we have built direct translators from ODE intermediate representations to Ontolingua and FLogic, and we have also built reverse translators from these two languages to ODE intermediate representations. Expressiveness of the target languages is the main feature to analyse when automatically generating ontologies from ODE intermediate representations. Therefore, we analyse the expressiveness of Ontolingua and FLogic for creating classes, instances, relations, functions and axioms, which are the essential components in ontologies. The motivation for this analysis can be found in the (KA)² initiative and can be easily extended to any other domains and languages.