Ontolog Forum
General
| Full name of the tool | Macleod - Common Logic Environment for Ontology Development |
| Description of the tool | This program consists of a set of scripts designed for key reasoning tasks frequently encountered in ontology design and verification. At the moment it focuses on automating tasks that can be accomplished independent of the semantic of concepts and relations. These tasks are consistency checking of ontologies and their modules as well as checking whether competency questions, providing as lemmas, are entailed.
While the program primarily targets first-order ontologies specified in the Common Logic (CL) syntax, some parts of it can also be used for reasoning about ontologies in LADR (Prover9/Mace4) or TPTP syntax (accepted by many first-order theorem provers and model finders). The tasks are accomplished by running existing automated theorem provers and model finders in parallel to establish consistency or inconsistency of an ontology or a module thereof, or to prove a sentence from an ontology (or module) or to find a counterexample of the sentence. Moreover, the tool exploits the modularity of ontologies, which manifests itself in its file CL imports structure. In the near future it will be integrated with COLORE to provide design, verification, and other reasoning support for all ontologies in the repository. |
| Link to the tool | https://github.com/thahmann/macleod |
| Tool home page | https://github.com/thahmann/macleod |
| Download page | https://github.com/thahmann/macleod/archive/master.zip |
| Author | Torsten Hahmann |
| Contact | torsten@cs.toronto.edu |
| Institutional sponsor | University of Toronto |
| Last version | |
| License | GNU GPL |
| Mailing List |
Exploration
| Find ontologies with specific domain coverage | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Compare domain coverage across ontologies | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess or characterize breadth of domain coverage of an ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess or characterize depth or detail of domain coverage of an ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess or characterize use considerations of ontology including licensing, training, cost, updating, software requirements, and security | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess complexity of concept definitions (necessary and sufficient properties) and use of axioms | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Identify number and ratio of concepts, relations, and subclassing | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Identify frequency of use of ontology language features in an ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Identify age and use statistics of an ontology and its versions | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess the inferencing power of an ontology | Yes |
| -- comment | proving formally expressed compentency questions |
| Rate ontologies on their popularity or review feedback | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Other ontology quality and fitness support for exploration phase (describe capability) |
Management
| Distinguish between conceptual and operational ontologies and objectives | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Generate ontology application and performance requirements | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Organize and track the life cycle requirements and progression of an ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Organize and maintain a collection of related ontologies and ontology modules | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Provide statistics on ontology versioning and use | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide ontology development per a quality assurance methodology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess the reusability of a planned ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Other ontology quality and fitness support for management phase (describe capability) |
Design
| Does Macleod guide formulation of ontology requirements? | |
| Guide formulation of domain scope and detail requirements | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide formulation of goodness of design requirements | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide formulation of data and information requirements | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide formulation of semantic and reasoning requirements | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide formulation of interface requirements | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide formulation of level of effort requirements | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Facilitate framing a set of competency questions exemplifying ontology objectives | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Choose metaphysical methodology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Does Macleod allow one to choose an extant ontology for reuse? | |
| Choose extant top ontology for reuse | Yes |
| -- comment | any from COLORE |
| Choose extant core ontologies for reuse | Yes |
| -- comment | any from COLORE |
| Apply a style of ontological analysis to design | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide design to optimize normalization, factoring, and simplicity of ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide application of open world or closed world semantics | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide ontology design to achieve inferencing requirements | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide ontology design to achieve scalability requirements | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Enable adjustable query and inference performance | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Does Macleod offer design patterns based on current ontology or design context? | |
| Offer application patterns based on current ontology or design context | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Offer ontology language patterns based on current ontology or design context | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Offer methodology patterns based on current ontology or design context | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Offer other patterns based on current ontology or design context | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Integrate selected design patterns into an ontology design | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess correctness or performance of an ontology design | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide and facilitate modularization of ontology | Yes |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide ontology design for visualization | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Other ontology quality and fitness support for design phase (describe capability) | |
Build
General Development
| Does Macleod allow one to choose an ontology language? | |
| Choose ontology language | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Choose formal logic language | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Choose RDF support | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Mix ontology languages | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Generate ontology code from requirements specification | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Generate or enforce selected design patterns in ontology code | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Feedback on consistency of granularity and regularity of domain ontology structure | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Manage lexical naming and annotation of ontology elements | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Ensure proper use and coding of RDF and Web resources | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Enforce proper use and coding of URIs | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Produce the current terminological inferences of an ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Optimize query and inference performance | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Detect violations of domain, referential, or semantic integrity | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Overall, detect and correct coding errors or inconsistencies | Yes |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Other ontology quality and fitness support for build phase (describe capability) | |
Concept Development
| Ensure proper separation and coding of concepts and facts | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Ensure kind-of nature and consistency of subclassing | Yes |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide subclass versus class individual determinations | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Monitor depth of subclassing consistency across a domain ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Generate prototypical instances (individuals) to help verify class intent and class subsumption | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Detect and guide use of multiple inheritance | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide use of disjointness axioms | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide use of necessary and sufficient properties in concept definitions | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide use of existential versus universal quantification in class restrictions | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Enforce proper use of conjunctions versus disjunctions | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
Relationship Development
| Ensure proper use and coding of relations | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Ensure proper use and coding of data types | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess and enforce consistency and completeness of range and domain constraints | Yes |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess and enforce consistency and completeness of inverse relations | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Ensure proper use and coding of transitive relations | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
Validation
| Verify that ontology requirements are met | Yes |
| -- comment | through competency questions |
| Can Macleod assess query performance? | |
| Assess query precision and recall performance | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess query time performance | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Can Macleod assess inference performance? | |
| Assess inferencing time performance | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess inferencing completeness performance | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Generate characteristic queries and tests | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Accept validation test sets or inputs | Yes |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Can Macleod assure computability of ontology? | |
| Assure semantically adequate computability of ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assure mathematically complete computability of ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Verify that two ontologies are interoperable | Yes |
| -- comment | interpretations can be proved |
| Validate the intended functionality of software using the ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Validate instance data conforming to an ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess accuracy, correctness, and completeness of ontology terminological content | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Guide or adjust ontology in accord with validation results | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Other ontology quality and fitness support for validation phase (describe capability) | |
Integration and Use
| Export ontology in different languages | Yes |
| -- comment | currently supported: TPTP, LADR (Prover9/Mace4) |
| Integrate ontology with other ontologies | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Integrate ontology with other information system resources | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Assess or track user experience with ontology | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Enable user to modify or extend ontology to address deficiencies | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Create mappings from ontologies to and from data and data sources | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Other ontology quality and fitness support for integration and use phase (describe capability) |
Maintenance
| Promote reuse of ontology | Yes |
| -- comment | through mappings/interpretaions |
| Capture ontology errors during use | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Profile use of ontology elements during use | No |
| -- comment | Optional remarks |
| Compare and map between ontologies | Yes |
| -- comment | mappings/interpretations between ontologies |
| Track ontology changes and control versions | Yes |
| -- comment | within COLORE |
| Other ontology quality and fitness support for maintenance phase (describe capability) |