CSE-291: Ontologies in Data and Process Integration, Spring 2004
Logistics
Overview
Ontologies play an increasing role in data and information
integration, as evidenced by new workshops, special tracks at
conferences, new journals, and activities such as the "Semantic Web".
Within computer science, ontologies have traditionally been studied in
the context of AI and logic-based knowledge representation. The
database community has also (re-)discovered this topic and is now
increasingly active in this area. Application areas range from the
business world (Enterprise Information Integration) to information
integration for scientific data (e.g., Gene Ontology, Unified
Medical Language System, ...). The latter is the focus of this
course. In particular, we will study ontologies from different
perspectives, and will address questions such as:
- How are existing ontologies used in the various
application domains, e.g., bioinformatics?
- What
formalisms (graphs, logics, ...) are used (or not used...) for
the representation of ontologies?
- Given some formalism, what problem does an ontology
solve? What does it do for you and/or the data integration
problem? And what can we, as computer scientists, do to an
ontology (i.e., when we study ontologies in their own right)?
- Last not least, this year will feature an additional
focus on process ontologies and integration , i.e.,
mechanisms to capture procedural knowledge.
The seminar will include introductory presentations by the instructor,
guest lectures (tentative), and presentations by students based on the
literature or practical exercises.
More specifically, we will
- read and discuss relevant articles from the literature on
knowledge representation, ontologies, and applications, e.g.,
in databases
- take a look at specifics "ontology tools", including
first-order reasoners
Students will have the choice between "theory" and "practice" studies,
where the former is typically a presentation of one or more selected
articles, and the latter is a "practical experiment" that involves
applying an ontology tool or formalism to a specific problem or domain
(e.g., ecology, geosciences, biology, ...)
Grading
Grading will be primarily based on the quality of the report and
presentation that the student will prepare and give during one of the
last meetings of the class. The presentation will be based on one or
more papers, and may include a system demonstration (for the
``hands-on'' topics).
The difference in the number of units is reflected in the level of
effort: e.g., for one unit, a typical presentation and report will
cover 1-2 papers (for a theory topic), or a modeling exercise with a
single tool (for hands-on topics). For four units, a comparative study
with 3-4 papers is typical (or a very detailed analysis of 1-2
papers), or a comparative modeling exercise with several tools (for
hands-on topics).
Presentations will be ca. 45 minutes (independent of units taken).
Comparative studies can be conducted in teams of two students and
presented jointly (30-45 minutes each student).
Topics and References
Schedule
- April 2:
- April 9:
- Introduction to description
logics
- References:
- F. Baader, W. Nutt.
Basic Description Logics. In the Description Logic
Handbook, edited by F. Baader, D. Calvanese,
D.L. McGuinness, D. Nardi, P.F. Patel-Schneider,
Cambridge University Press, 2002, pages 47-100
- I. Horrocks, U. Sattler, Description
Logics Tutorial ECAI-2002
- April 16:
- April 23:
- April 30:
- May 7:
- May 14:
- May 21: presentations by Michael
and Daniel; discussions
- May 28: presentations by Dipti, Matt and David; discussions
- June 4: presentations by Kiran and
Chien-Yi; discussions
Bertram Ludaescher
Last modified: Wed May 19 03:55:02 PDT 2004
List of topics and additional literature references 
(PDF with "clickable"
references).