Semantic similarity search is one of the most promising methods for improving the performance of retrieval systems. This paper presents a new probabilistic method for ontology weighting based on a Bayesian approach. In particular, this work addresses the semantic search method SemSim for evaluating the similarity among a user request and semantically annotated sources. Each resource is annotated with a vector of features (annotation vector), i.e., a set of concepts defined in a reference ontology. Analogously, a user request is represented by a collection of desired features. The paper shows, on the bases of a comparative study, that the adoption of the Bayesian weighting method improves the performance of the SemSim method.

Summary The role of ontologies in the enterprise world is constantly increasing, and they are proving even more necessary in distributed production realities, like in extended logistics, industrial districts, or virtual enterprises. In such realities, a common conceptual basis is necessary to compensate the fragmentation inherent in the underlying industrial models. This paper presents an end‐to‐end framework based on an open, collaborative approach for developing and maintaining business domain ontologies. The framework has been achieved within the European Project BIVEE and has been experimented in two industrial realities: the high‐tech sector of robotics and the more traditional one of furniture. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

SUMMARY Business process reengineering (BPR) is a common practice for a continuous improvement of the organization and the operations of an enterprise. An important technique of BPR is based on business rules (BRs). The latter are, in general, represented using natural language and, therefore, carry a certain degree of imprecision and ambiguity; therefore, our first objective is to start from informal BR and disambiguate them by using a question answering method based on a decision table. The introduction of BRs impacts on existing business processes (BPs), requiring often a reengineering intervention. In this paper, we present an approach to BPR based on the systematic use of ontologies and semantic annotations and focused on dependency constraints, a particular kind of BRs. To this end, we propose the synergic use of Business Process Abstract Language, a BP modeling framework to represent BP schemas, and Object Process Actor modeling Language, an ontological framework to capture the semantics of a business scenario. Both the frameworks are grounded in logic, and therefore, it is possible to apply effective reasoning methods to make inferences over a Business Process Knowledge Base stemming from the union of the two above components. Then we propose a query engine allowing for the detection of BPs that are not compliant with the BRs and, more precisely, the specific BP segment where to intervene. The proposed platform has been conceived not to substitute existing BPM tools but to integrate them providing advanced services to support rule‐based BPR activities. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Ontologies are emerging as a key solution to allow different applications to exchange information in a cooperative business environment. From the technology point of view, the growth of the Internet and the Web has favoured the exchange of information and documents among people, but unfortunately the same is not true when information is exchanged among software applications. To tackle the latter problem, ontology-based approaches are among the most promising ones. This is one of the reasons of the momentum that ontologies, and consequently ontology management systems (OMSs), are witnessing. An OMS represents a powerful tool to create common and shareable knowledge repositories concerning a given application domain. The goal of this work is to present SymOntoX, a Web-based OMS conceived for the ebusiness domain. It is an open source software system supporting collaborative and distributed ontology authoring activities.

The possibility of assessing the similarity between concepts is growing in importance. One of the primary reasons for this is the development of the Net Economy that requires a high level of computer support and flexibility in doing business. In business transactions, similarity plays an important role. It is constantly used whenever certain goods or services are not available with the required characteristics. Then a substitute may be accepted, as far as it is sufficiently close to what was originally required. In this paper we propose a method for evaluating concept similarity. The work has been performed within the SymOntos project concerning the development of a symbolic ontology management system, where concepts are defined in accordance with a frame-oriented approach.

Abstract- Though the utility of domain Ontologies is now widely acknowledged in an increasing number of domains, several barriers must be overcome before Ontologies become practical and useful tools. A critical issue is the task of identifying, defining, and entering the concept definitions. In case of large and complex application domains this task can be lengthy, costly, and controversial (since different persons may have different points of view about the same concept). To reduce time, cost (and, sometimes, harsh discussions) it is highly advisable to refer, in constructing or updating an ontology, to the documents available in the field. In this paper we describe OntoLearn, a text-mining tool devised to improve human productivity during the process of ontology construction. 1.

Inheritance is introducted in object-oriented systems to enhance code reuse and create more compact and readable software. Powerful object models adopt multiple inheritance, allowing a type (or class) definition to inherit from more than one supertype. Unfortunately, in applying this powerful modeling mechanism, inheritance conflicts may be generated, which arise when the same property or operation is defined in more than one supertype. Inheritance conflicts identification and resolution is the key issue of this article. In strongly typed object-oriented systems the resolutioin of inheritance conflicts depends on the compatibility of the types of the conflicting definitions. In case of incompatible types, a contradiction arises. This article focuses on object-oriented databases (ODBs), providing a method aimed at supporting the designer in the construction of correct ODB schemas. The first necessary condition for schema correctness is the absence of contradictions. A second cause of schema incorrectness is due to the presence of structurally recursive types that, when defined within certain hierarchical patterns, cause the nontermination of the inheritance process. In the article, after the formal definition of a correct schema, two graph-theoretic methods aimed at verifying ODB schema correctness are analyzed. Although the first method is intuitive but inefficient, the second allows schema correctness to be checked in polynomial time, in the size of the schema. The results of this study are included in the implementation of Mosaico, an environment for ODB application design.

The paper describes the analysis, design, and fast prototyping of MINT, an information and decision support system for railway traffic control. MINT is a complex system that tightly integrates information management and problem solving functionalities, by means of an object oriented approach. The work is characterised by several issues: (i) object oriented analysis and design; (ii) knowledge based application modeling, by means of a powerful conceptual language (TQL++); (iii) advanced search techniques in the problem solving component; (iv) fast prototyping by automatic generation of executable code; (v) use of an advanced knowledge based modeling and prototyping environment (Mosaico). The paper starts with a description of the railway traffic control problem, then it focuses no the architecture of MINT, with a particular attention to the database component and its train conflict solving capabilities.

Presents Mosaico, an integrated environment conceived to support the design and specification of object-oriented database applications. Mosaico assists the designer in producing a formal and correct specification of the application domain in the form of a conceptual schema, a conceptual model of the application functions, and, finally, an executable prototype of the database application. The conceptual model of the database application is constructed by using the design language TQL++ (Type and Query Language++). The resultant TQL++ specification is semantically verified based on the theory underlying TQL++. Furthermore, through rapid prototyping, the TQL++ specification can be functionally verified. Semantic verification guarantees the correctness of the specification within the realm of the formal theory of the language. However, it does not guarantee the "fidelity" of the specification to the real world requirements (i.e. what the users really want). Rapid prototyping and functional verification are a means to bridge that gap.>

The system Mosaico [MT94] has been conceived to support the design, conceptual modeling, and rapid prototyping of data intensive applications based on Object-Oriented Databases (OODBS). The application is modeled through a graphical user interface and the produced model is encoded in TQL++, the design language on which Mosaico is based.

This paper addresses the problem of relational queries processing in the domain based database machine DBMAC. A brief description of the storage organisation of the domain based DBMS is first given. Then the operating principles of the domain based data-model, called D-model, is described through some examples. The central part of the paper deals with the translation of relational queries into operations on objects of the D-model. Objects of the D-model and a set of operations on these objects are first defined : this set S of operations is shown to be complete in that any relational query can be translated into D-model operations belonging to S.Finally we give a method for processing relation queries using D-model operations.The basic advantages to be expected from a domain based physical organization of data are :1. fast equi-join execution,2. a compact representation of intermediate results.The latter should lead to efficient processing of complex queries, provided a powerful parallel physical architecture is chosen for implementation.

In this paper a method for relational database storage organization is presented.The method is based upon a disaggregation of the relations and a subsequent reaggregation to form the domains on which the relations are defined.A hierarchical organization of the domain is proposed in order to keep track of the relational entities (i.e. relations, tuples and attributes) that insist on the values present in the domains.Then we introduce an implementation technique, referred to as Data Pool, suitable to be processed by a database machine capable of "on the fly" track processing.Finally we present an analytic evaluation of the DP method and an example of database and query with performance comparison of the DP method with the most common flat file technique.The proposed method appears to be generally advantageous in storage occupancy; in data retrieval operations it is extremely effective when joins between permanent relations are performed. Good performances can be achieved with other relational operations using proper parallel architectures and, when temporary relations are involved, using special purpose devices.