On the refinement of ontologies

Ontologies have emerged as one of the key issues in information integration and interoperability and their application to knowledge management and electronic commerce. A trend towards formal methods for ontology management is obvious. This paper discusses a concept which can be expected to be of great importance to formal ontology management, and which is well-known in traditional software development: the refinement of ontologies. We define and discuss the concept, give illustrating examples, and highlight its advantages as compared to other forms of ontology revision.

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