Measuring Distances for Ontology-Based Systems

Nowadays, measurement and assessment of artifacts within the area of software development are of high concern for scientific institutions. With the increasing usage of the Web 2.0, together with service-oriented applications, the importance of Web-based systems is still growing. Ontologies as a fundamental concept of the Semantic Web as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee, play an important role for current and future applications. To promote the high flexibility of this technology for international dynamics, additional concepts for the Semantic Web are necessary. Ontology metrics are used to measure certain aspects of ontologies. In this paper, a set of novel distance metrics is introduced and their applicability is proven by the presentation of an example.