On the Updating of Domain OWL Models at Runtime in Factory Automation Systems

Related Work

Moser and Biffl (2012) investigate semantic integration between different ontologies and present an approach for maintaining a common ontology model to which tool-specific ontologies are mapped. The approach makes it possible for different stakeholders to use their own local data models while still allowing the validation of the entire combined runtime model (Moser & Biffl, 2012).

Another approach to integrate different domain ontologies is to use a common adaptable base ontology, which the domain specific ontologies extend (Uddin, Puttonen, Scholze, Dvoryanchikova, & Lastra, 2012). Such a hierarchical domain ontology can be constructed using a top-down or a bottom-up approach or a combination of the two (Sheng-tao Sun, Ding-sheng Liu, Guo-Qing Li, Wen-yang Yu, & Lv Pang, 2010). While using a common base ontology does facilitate the integration between different knowledge models (Sheng-tao Sun et al., 2010), it considerably restricts the development of domain-specific ontology models. Loskyll, Schlick et al. (2011) point out that when web services are mapped to concrete devices in the plant model, the service preconditions and effects make it possible to automatically update the plant model. Similarly, one of the domain model approaches presented in this paper is based on the semantic web service preconditions and effects.