XeOML : An XML-based extensible Ontology Mapping Language

Semantic Interoperability is a crucial issue in the Semantic Web context: web services and portals, providing real-time access to widely distributed information sources, need to overcome problems due to heterogeneities in the use of distinct locales, languages and idioms. Though standardization efforts for semantic content representation are converging toward some concrete standards, still a lot of work is required to achieve real interoperability over knowledge content as managed by communities of autonomous and distributed individuals. An unavoidable trade-off between coverage of heterogeneous information sources and achievement of common semantics for accessing their content emerges. In this framework, we have carried out our research to develop an extensible language (XeOML) for describing mappings between domain ontologies, in which knowledge representation formalisms and similarity measures can be dynamically added according to community needs and intent.