Maturity-based analysis of lightweight ontology from the aspect of extensibility, reusability and evolutionary

Abstract

A lightweight ontology is built using classes, instances and relationships without the axiomatic definitions contained in heavyweight ontology. A lightweight ontology highlights the structure of knowledge, whereas heavyweight ontology is rich with reasoning capacities. In this study, the Herb Ontology (HO) was used. It provided an example of a lightweight ontology for herbal data. As time goes by, it is expected to extended, reused and evolved as it matures. The design of HO was inspired by two well-established full-fledged ontologies, which were Gene Ontology and OntoCAPE. The focus of this study was on the evolution of lightweight ontologies as they evolve towards becoming heavyweight ontology through maturity. Lightweight ontologies are expected to have distinct semantics, which begin to resemble heavyweight ontologies as they gradually evolve. Maturity metric principles were also proposed in this study. The metrics measured both class-levels and ontologylevels so that different aspects of ontological design could be evaluated. The results of the study pointed out the current metrics that lead to general interpretations. These metrics also indicated the complexity of maturing ontologies for lightweight and heavyweight designs.