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A Semantics-Preserving Approach for Extracting OWL Ontologies from UML Class Diagrams

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Book cover Database Theory and Application (DTA 2009)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 64))

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Abstract

Full implementation of the Semantic Web requires widespread availability of OWL ontologies. Manual ontology development using current OWL-aware editors remains a tedious and cumbersome task that can easily result in a knowledge acquisition bottleneck. Conceptual schemata such as UML class diagrams, on the other hand, capture abundant domain knowledge. Thus developing approaches and tools for extracting the available knowledge can facilitate the development of OWL ontologies and the construction of various Semantic Web applications. In this paper, a formal approach for extracting OWL DL ontologies from existing UML class diagrams is presented. The approach establishes a precise conceptual correspondence between the two models and relies on a semantics-preserving UML-to-OWL translation algorithm. Tool implementation and case study show that the proposed approach is effective and fully automatic ontology extraction from UML Class Diagrams is implementable.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer and Information Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, P.R. China

    Zhuoming Xu, Yuyan Ni, Lili Lin & Huajian Gu

Authors
  1. Zhuoming Xu
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  2. Yuyan Ni
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  3. Lili Lin
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  4. Huajian Gu
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Warsaw and Infobright Inc., Poland

    Dominik Ślęzak

  2. Hannam University, 306-791, Daejeon, South Korea

    Tai-hoon Kim

  3. Utrecht University, The Netherlands

    Yanchun Zhang

  4. Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan

    Jianhua Ma

  5. ETRI, South Korea

    Kyo-il Chung

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Xu, Z., Ni, Y., Lin, L., Gu, H. (2009). A Semantics-Preserving Approach for Extracting OWL Ontologies from UML Class Diagrams. In: Ślęzak, D., Kim, Th., Zhang, Y., Ma, J., Chung, Ki. (eds) Database Theory and Application. DTA 2009. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 64. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10583-8_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10583-8_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-10582-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-10583-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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