Reference: Gruber, T. R. Ontolingua: A Mechanism to Support Portable Ontologies. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, November, 1992.
Abstract: An ontology is a set of definitions of content-specific knowledge representation primitives: classes, relations, functions, and object constants. Ontolingua is a mechanism or writing ontologies in a canonical format, such that they can be easily translated into a variety of representation and reasoning systems. This allows one to maintain the ontology in a single, machine-readable form while using it in systems with different syntax and reasoning capabilities. The syntax and semantics are based on the KIF knowledge interchange format [9]. Ontolingua extends KIF with standard primitives for defining classes and relations, and organizing knowledge in object-centered hierarchies with inheritance. The Ontolingua software provides an architecture for translating from KIF-level sentences into forms that can be efficiently stored and reasoned about by target representation systems. Currently, there are translators into LOOM, Epikit, and Algernon, as well as a canonical form of KIF.
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