Representation and validation of domain and range restrictions in a relational database-driven ontology maintenance system

An ontology can be used to represent and organize the objects, properties, events, processes, and relations that embody an area of reality [1]. These knowledge bases may be created manually (by individuals or groups), and/or automatically using software tools, such as those developed for information retrieval and data mining. Recently the National Science Foundation funded a large collaborative development project for the semi-automated construction of an ontology of amphibian anatomy (AmphibAnat [2]). To satisfy the extensive community curation requirements of that project, a generic, Web-based, multi-user, relational database ontology management system (RDBOM [3]) was constructed, based upon a novel theoretical ontology model called an Ontology Abstract Machine (OAM [4]). The need to support concurrent data entry by multiple users with different levels of access privileges (as determined and assigned by the administrators) made it critical to ensure that the entered data were semantically correct. In particular, the ability to define and enforce restrictions on relations would help to identify inconsistencies in the ontology, maintain a higher level of overall integrity, and avoid erroneous conclusions that could be made by automated reasoners. In this paper we present a modified OAM model that accommodates one type of data restriction, domain and range, and facilitates associated validation. As proof of concept, we also describe how this modified abstract model has been implemented in RDBOM.