Distributed ontology management system

This paper presents development of the distributed ontology management system (DOMS). The objective of DOMS was to provide a framework for handling the sharing, storage, versioning, and security of ontologies in a repository. The ontologies are represented by a generic object-oriented class hierarchy, which can be translated into an XML (extensible markup language) representation. To share ontologies, DOMS uses a distributed client-server architecture using TCP (transmission control protocol). A relational database is used for storing the ontologies in DOMS. A mapping from relational to the generic representation, which is object-oriented, can transfer data in and out of the database. Ontology versioning is performed by using the ontology´s versioning information that is modeled in the database. To enhance system security, communication between the client and server is encrypted with SSL (secure socket layer). Additionally, DOMS uses an individual-based model to control access to the ontologies. An ontology editor has also been integrated with DOMS. This paper shows that DOMS provides some improvements upon existing ontology management systems, and discusses ways for further extension of the system