Enabling distribution and reuse of ontology mapping information for semantically enriched communication services

In the past, many attempts have been made to improve the interoperability between different Web-based information systems. In most approaches the remaining problems are still twofold. They are optimized for specific business sectors and they do not cope with the challenge of incorporating semantics into data. In the Semantic Web ontologies and ontology mapping are often seen as new solutions providing semantically enriched information exchange facilities. A communication framework for ontology mapping is introduced in order to support several applications accessing multiple ontologies. A common interface for distribution and reuse of ontology mapping information based on the concept of semantic bridges is part of the framework.