Staab S., Studer R. (eds.) Handbook on Ontologies

Springer, 2009. — 832.The second edition of the Handbook on Ontologies provides an up-to-date comprehensive overview of the field of ontologies that is evolving rather fast. Since the first edition of the handbook that was finished in 2003 and published in 2004, ontologies have achieved an even more important role with respect to the advancement of established information systems, of systems for data and knowledge management, or of systems for collaboration and information sharing as well as for the development of revolutionary fields such as semantic technologies and, more specifically, the Semantic Web. By covering a broad range of aspects that are related to ontologies, i.e. language and engineering aspects, infrastructures and applications, the reader of this handbook may either get a broad, comprehensive picture of the field of ontologies or he may investigate specific aspects of ontologies that are most relevant for her or his work.
Between the time we wrote the preface to the 1st edition of the ontology handbook, 5 years ago, and today, a large amount of research work, development and use of ontologies have happened. Therefore, the handbook has undergone major changes from the first to the second revision.
At the level of the coarsest granularity, the reader may discover one completely new part (Part III) on – Ontologies. This part now covers the description of some very intriguing ontologies that were not around in 2003.
Thereby, this part mirrors the fact that – unlike in 2003 – finding ontologies on the Web is now easy, selecting the right one may be the hard and learning by example what is a good ontology or what is a promising field of application for ontologies is absolutely necessary.
Furthermore, the reader may discover that the part on Ontology Infrastructure has been divided into two parts, one on Infrastructure for Ontologies and one on Ontology-Based Infrastructures and Methods. The first extends the scope of ontologies by providing a larger extent of scalability for dealing with ontologies. The second extends the scope of ontologies by presenting refined and new approaches for putting ontologies into different types of software infrastructures and methods. The latter kind does in fact constitute a generic type of application of ontologies, one that is independent of a particular target domain of application.
Finally, one may find again core parts of the first edition, such as Part I: Ontology Representation Languages, Part II: Ontology Engineering and Part VI: Ontology-Based Applications.
However, within these parts 21 (sic!) of the 36 overall chapters had to be written from scratch. Nearly all the remaining chapters have undergone substantial changes to make them up-to-date. We will not describe these changes in detail, but we want to present to the reader the flow he now finds in the second edition of the ontology handbook.What Is an Ontology?
Part I Ontology Representation Languages
Description Logics
Ontologies in F-Logic
Resource Description Framework
Web Ontology Language: OWL
Ontologies and Rules
Part II Ontology Engineering
Ontology Engineering Methodology
Ontology Engineering and Evolution in a Distributed World Using DILIGENT
Formal Concept Analysis
An Overview of OntoClean
Ontology Design Patterns
Ontology Learning
Ontology and the Lexicon
Ontology Evaluation
Ontology Engineering Environments
Exploring the Economical Aspects of Ontology Engineering
Part III Ontologies
Foundational Choices in DOLCE
An Ontology for Software
COMM: A Core Ontology for Multimedia Annotation
Using the PSL Ontology
Ontologies for Formal Representation of Biological Systems
Ontologies for Cultural Heritage
Part IV Infrastructures for Ontologies
RDF Storage and Retrieval Systems
Tableau-Based Reasoning
Resolution-Based Reasoning for Ontologies
Ontology Repositories
Ontology Mapping
Part V Ontology-Based Infrastructure and Methods
Ontologies and Software Engineering
Semantic Web Services
Ontologies for Machine Learning
Information Extraction
Browsing and Navigation in Semantically Rich Spaces: Experiences with Magpie Applications
Part VI Ontology-Based Applications
Ontologies for Knowledge Management
Application of Ontologies in Bioinformatics
Semantic Portals for Cultural Heritage
Ontology-Based Recommender Systems