Modular Ontology Engineering with CoModIDE

CoModIDE is a plugin for Protégé that enables graphical drag-and-drop editing of ontologies, with built in support for Ontology Design Patterns (ODPs). CoModIDE allows for simple construction and maintenance of modular ontologies; moreover, by taking an opinionated position on how to render OWL axioms on a graphical canvas, and which axioms to generate from constructs on said canvas, CoModIDE represents an attempt to develop the fine-grained method guidance we believe is missing from ODP usage methodologies.

This tutorial aims to illustrate to participants how to use CoModIDE for both applied ontology engineering, and research on ontology engineering methodology. Specifically, our objectives are:

1. To teach the participants how to use the CoModIDE tool for the construction and maintenance of small- to medium-sized modular ontologies based on design patterns.
2. To illustrate the utility of modular ontology engineering to researchers, such that they can use and spread these methods and tools in projects with industry.

Learning Objectives

After taking this tutorial, participants should:

1. Be able to select, instantiate, align, and remove ontology design pattern-based modules into/from a modular ontology using CoModIDE.
2. Be able to apply the XD methodology and CoModIDE to create and evolve medium-sized ontologies.
3. Understand the design choices that have gone into the CoModIDE tooling, including the tradeoffs between usability and logic expressivity that need to be considered when rendering ontologies graphically.

Tutorial Schedule

The tutorial is held on Sunday June 6, 2021, starting at 09:00 CEST.

Exercise 1 – Introduction to CoModIDE modelling – Sensors/Observations domain – 90 minutes (09:00-10:30 CEST)

• Introductory lecture to ODPs, eXtreme Design, the CoModIDE tool – 20 minutes.
• Tutor-led tool walkthrough and example modelling on projector – 20 minutes.
• Tooling installation on participant computers – 10 minutes.
• Individual hands-on development exercise, tutored by the presenters – 40 minutes.

Break (10:30-10:45 CEST)

Exercise 2 – Advanced modelling topics – Instructions/Workflows domain – 90 minutes (10:45-12:15 CEST)

• Lecture 2: CoModIDE architecture, building ODPs, OPLa module annotations, ongoing and future work – 30 minutes.
• Individual hands-on development exercise, tutored by the presenters – 60 minutes.

Presenters

Cogan Shimizu
Data Semantics Lab, Kansas State University, USA
Email: coganmshimizu@ksu.edu
Web: https://coganshimizu.com/

Cogan holds a PhD from Kansas State University (KSU), USA, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Data Semantics Laboratory, also at KSU. Cogan’s dissertation focused on ontology engineering methodologies, specifically those that involve ontology design patterns, with an intended result of making ontology engineering more accessible to non-ontologists. Currently, his work involves the development, use, and evaluation of intuitive tooling infrastructure to support such methodologies. He has co-organized the Workshop on Ontology Design and Patterns at ISWC in 2019 and 2020, and the 1st workshop on the Semantic Web in Practice: Pedagogy and Tools at ISWC 2020, as well as participating in and leading numerous VoCamps.

Karl Hammar
Department of Computing, Jönköping University, Sweden
Email: karl.hammar@ju.se
Web: https://karlhammar.com

Karl is the Head of the Department of Computing at Jönköping University, Sweden. His PhD dissertation focused specifically on ontology engineering methods and tools supporting the use of Ontology Design Patterns. His research has continued in this direction, focusing on applied ontology engineering in real-world scenarios, ranging from building automation and analytics, to veterinary syndromic surveillance.