Verifying ontological commitment in knowledge-based systems

An ontology defines the terminology of a domain of knowledge: the concepts that constitute the domain, and the relationships between those concepts. In order for two or more knowledge-based systems to interoperate-for example, by exchanging knowledge, or collaborating as agents in a co-operative problem-solving process-they must commit to the definitions in a common ontology. Verifying such commitment is therefore a prerequisite for reliable knowledge-based system interoperability. This article shows how existing knowledge base verification techniques can be applied to verify the commitment of a knowledge-based system to a given ontology. The method takes account of the fact that an ontology will typically be expressed using a different knowledge representation language to the knowledge base, by incorporating translation into the verification procedure. While the representation languages used are specific to a particular project, their features are general and the method has broad applicability. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.