The document discusses the challenges of vocabulary alignment between ontologies. It notes that current systems use complex reasoning that does not scale well to large vocabularies and makes results difficult to explain. While alignment failures occur for different reasons each time, the document argues that interactive alignment involving domain experts can address this problem and be applied successfully even to large datasets. It suggests that the current evaluation protocol does not adequately assess interactive features or account for the human roles involved in ontology development and use. An example alignment between the AAT and WordNet ontologies is provided.

1. The Anna Karenina problem in vocabulary alignment:
“Happy alignments are all alike;
every unhappy alignment is
unhappy in its own way”
Jacco van Ossenbruggen Panel at the Ontology Matching
CWI & VU University Amsterdam workshop, ISWC 2012

2. OAEI VLCR track
• 2008: 1 participant
• 2009: 2 participants
• 2010, 2011
1

3. OAEI Library track
• 2008: 3 participants
• 2009: 1 participant
• 2010, 2011
• 2012: It’s back!
2

4. OAEI Directory track
from: Results of the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative 2010
JérômeEuzenat, Alfio Ferrara, Christian Meilicke, Juan Pane, François Scharffe, PavelShvaiko,
HeinerStuckenschmidt, OndřejŠváb-Zamazal, VojtěchSvátek and CássiaTrojahn dos Santos
3

5. Observations
• Current systems are complex
reasoning engines that combine
multiple strategies in some “smart” way
• This “smartness” has major drawbacks:
– does not scale on large vocabularies
– hard to predict if it will work for your data
– hard to explain results afterwards:
what went wrong, why & how to fix it
4

6. Bad news, good news
• Bad news:
– alignments fail for different reasons every time
– solving this is an AI-complete problem
– requires knowledge that is in the heads of the
domain experts, not in the data
• Good news:
– with experts on board, it is not that difficult
– we can even do large datasets interactively
– users are willing to spend time to get it right
5

7. Evaluation
• Current evaluation protocol
– is not suited for evaluating interactive features
– has abstracted away all human parties involved
• ontology publishers
• application developers
• application users
– ignores that ontology publishers are often willing
to spend serious time & effort on alignment
process
http://semanticweb.cs.vu.nl/lod/tpdl2011/ 6

8. Example: AAT to WordNet
• aat:restorer
altLabels: restaurateur (fr), Restaurator (de) , hersteller (nl), ...
scopeNote: Those engaged in making changes to an object or structure so
that it will closely approximate its state at a specific time in its history.
(...)
When changes made are to prevent further deterioration, see
"preservationists." More generally, for those who undertake
treatment, preventive care, and research directed toward long-term
safekeeping of cultural and natural heritage, see "conservators."
• wn:restorer
synonyms: refinisher, renovator, restorer, preserver
gloss: a skilled worker who is employed to restore or refinish buildings or
antique furniture.
http://semanticweb.cs.vu.nl/lod/tpdl2011/ 7