Les techniques actuelles d'indexation sur le Web ne sont pas satisfaisantes pour les ressources pédagogiques. En effet, l'indexation automatique, e.g. Google, peut difficilement dépasser le niveau syntaxique des contenus tandis que l'indexation par des documentalistes est coûteuse en main d'oeuvre. Or de récentes approches telles que les techniques du Web Sémantique ou la tendance du Web Participatif (Web 2.0) offrent des solutions prometteuses. Une première partie de nos travaux porte ainsi sur l'étude du Web Sémantique appliqué aux ressources pédagogiques. Nous y explorons les possibilités de raisonnements automatisés appliqués à des ontologies pédagogiques. Une seconde partie porte sur l'étude des fonctionnalités des sites participatifs, facilitant l'ajout de contenus et de métadonnées par les visiteurs. Nous proposons alors un modèle de site participatif adapté aux communautés d'enseignants. Néanmoins, Web Sémantique et Web Participatif sont souvent opposés. Aux ontologies formelles généralement réalisées par quelques experts s'opposent les tags hétérogènes ajoutés par de nombreux utilisateurs aux profils variés. Dans une troisième partie, nous proposons donc un modèle fusionnant Sémantique et Participatif. Ce modèle vise à développer des applications de partage de ressources, principalement pour des communautés de pratique. Il se fonde sur une Indexation Progressive et Multi-points de vue (modèle IPM) consistant à : - permettre aux utilisateurs de structurer progressivement les métadonnées, pour finalement favoriser des raisonnements sémantiques par les machines ; - permettre aux utilisateurs de collaborer progressivement, pour finalement favoriser une vision partagée du domaine par les humains. Ce modèle est implémenté dans un outil de partage de signets, nommé SemanticScuttle, proposant des fonctionnalités originales comme des tags structurés par des relations d'inclusion et de synonymie, ou des espaces wiki pour décrire des tags. L'outil a été développé et expérimenté avec des documentalistes en sociologie sur plusieurs mois. Diffusé, l'outil est employé par des utilisateurs dans plusieurs pays. Finalement, nos travaux nous permettent de formuler des hypothèses sur un modèle socio-technique soutenant le partage entre enseignants. Ils sont aussi une contribution à des modèles intégrant différentes formes d'indexation : automatique et par des humains, faisant intervenir des experts et les utilisateurs, fondée sur des modèles structurés (e.g. ontologies) et sur des métadonnées flexibles (e.g. tags). Mot-clefs : Indexation (documentation), Pédagogie – Ressources internet, Web 2.0, Communautés virtuelles, Web sémantique, Ontologies (informatique). / Current ways for Web indexing are not sufficient for learning resources. Indeed, automatic indexing, e.g. Google, can hardly raise above the syntaxical level of contents while indexing by human experts implies high costs. But, recent approaches like Semantic Web and Participative Web (Web 2.0) offer promising solutions. A first part of our works concerns the study of Semantic Web applied to learning resources. We explore possibilities of reasonings applied to educational ontologies. A second part is about the study of functionalities on participative websites making easier the adding of content and metadata by visitors. Then we propose a model of participative website adapted to communities of teachers. Nevertheless, Semantic Web and Participative Web are often opposed. Formal ontologies generally produced by experts are opposed to heterogeneous tags added by numerous users with various profiles. In a third part, we propose a model melting Semantic and Participative. The goal of this model is to help developping applications for sharing resources into communities of practice. It is based on a Progressive and Multi-points of view Indexing in which: - users progressively structure metadata, to finally allow semantic reasonings by computers; - users progressively collaborate, to finally allow a shared vision of the domain by humans. This model is implemented into a social bookmarking tool, called SemanticScuttle, offering original features like tags structured by relations of inclusion and synonymy, or wiki spaces to describe tags. The tool was developped and tested with librarians in sociology during several months. Finally, our works allow us to formulate hypotheses about a social and technical model supporting sharing between teachers. They also contribute to models melting different indexing solutions: automatic or by humans, including experts or simple users, based on structured models (e.g. ontologies) or on flexible metadata (e.g. tags).

Redes de Quarta Geração (4G) possibilitam acesso ubíquo a serviços em redes heterogêneas. Nesses ambientes, a distribuição do gerenciamento pode necessitar de semânticas para o vocabulário compartilhado, uma facilidade ainda não explorada. Por essa razão, provedores de acesso de diferentes domínios de gerenciamento possuem o desafio de compartilhar informações gerenciais nas trocas de pontos de acesso realizadas pelos usuários em redes 4G. Isso se deve principalmente à carência de um modelo de negócio com controle de acesso, com acordos mútuos, e com gerenciamento de tarifação, segurança e privacidade , o que limita a colaboração entre provedores no momento de aceitar um novo usuário. Este trabalho descreve um conjunto de ontologias para serem utilizadas por novos modelos de acesso com suporte de ontologias para redes 4G. As ontologias formalizam o vocabulário comum das entidades em redes 4G. Para avaliar as ontologias desenvolvidas, a abordagem escolhida foi desenvolver dois protótipos de serviços para redes 4G que especializaram partes das ontologias Haggle, Y-Comm, SOHand e DOHand. A principal contribuição deste trabalho é facilitar a troca de informações gerenciais entre moderadores, usuários e provedores de serviços. Outra contribuição é mostrar como o uso de ontologias em plataformas 4G facilita a inserção de novos serviços nos ambientes integrados / Fourth Generation Networks (4G) introduce the capability of ubiquitous access to services in heterogeneous networks. In these environments, the distribution of the management would require semantics for common sharing vocabulary, an ability which is not yet provided. For that reason, service providers from different management domains are facing the challenge of exchanging managerial information between them during handovers. This is mainly due to the lack of new business models with access control, peering agreements, billing, security and privacy management, QoS standardization which strongly limit the collaboration between providers in the moment of receiving a new user. This work describes a set of ontologies to be used by new access models supported by ontologies for 4G. The ontologies are mapping out the common vocabulary of entities. The approach used to validate the set of ontologies was the development of two service prototypes for 4G, the prototypes specialized a subset of Haggle, Y-Comm, SOHand and DOHand ontologies. The main contribution is to provide the information structuring necessary for easy exchanging of managerial information between service providers, users and brokers. Another contribution of this work is to demostrate how ontologies facilitate the creation of new services in integrated environments

Atualmente uma grande quantidade de conteúdo é produzida e publicada todos os dias na Internet. São documentos publicados por diferentes pessoas, por diversas organizações e em inúmeros formatos sem qualquer tipo de padronização. Por esse motivo, a informação relevante sobre um mesmo domínio de interesse acaba espalhada pela Web nos diversos portais, o que dificulta uma visão ampla, centralizada e objetiva sobre esta informação. Nesse contexto, a integração dos dados espalhados na rede torna-se um problema de pesquisa relevante, para permitir a realização de consultas mais inteligentes, de modo a obter resultados mais ricos de significado e mais próximos do interesse do usuário. No entanto, tal integração não é trivial, sendo por muitas vezes custosa devido à dependência do desenvolvimento de sistemas e mão de obra especializados, visto que são poucos os modelos reaproveitáveis e facilmente integráveis entre si. Assim, a existência de um modelo padronizado para a integração dos dados e para o acesso à informação produzida por essas diferentes entidades reduz o esforço na construção de sistemas específicos. Neste trabalho é proposta uma arquitetura baseada em ontologias para a integração de dados publicados na Internet. O seu uso é ilustrado através de casos de uso reais para a integração da informação na Internet, evidenciando como o uso de ontologias pode trazer resultados mais relevantes. / A lot of content is produced and published every day on the Internet. Those documents are published by different people, organizations and in many formats without any type of established standards. For this reason, relevant information about a domain of interest is spread through the Web in various portals, which hinders a broad, centralized and objective view of this information. In this context, the integration of the data scattered in the network becomes a relevant research problem, to enable smarter queries, in order to obtain richer results of meaning and closer to the user\'s interest. However, such integration is not trivial, and is often costly because of the reliance on the development of specialized systems by professionals, since there are few reusable and easily integrable models. Thus, the existence of a standardized model for data integration and access to the information produced by these different entities reduces the effort in the construction of specific systems. In this work we propose an architecture based on ontologies for the integration of data published on the Internet. Its use is illustrated through experimental cases for the integration of information on the Internet, showing how the use of ontologies can bring more relevant results.

A reutilização de conhecimento é uma tarefa chave para qualquer sistema computacional. Entretanto, o reúso indiscriminado desse conhecimento pode gerar resultados conflitantes com o objetivo de uso do conhecimento, levando sistemas a se comportarem de maneira imprevisível. Neste trabalho estudamos as consequências do reúso de conhecimento em ontologias baseadas em lógicas de descrição. Focamos principalmente nos problemas que podem ser causados pela fusão de ontologias. Investigamos e comparamos a capacidade das ferramentas de desenvolvimento de ontologias atuais de lidarem com esses problemas e como a teoria se desenvolveu para resolver os mesmos problemas. Realizamos a construção de um arcabouço lógico e de software, organizado na forma de um processo, que tem como objetivo auxiliar o projetista de ontologias a resolver conflitos advindos da fusão. O processo agrupa tarefas descritas normalmente na literatura em separado. Acreditamos que a união dessas abordagens leva a uma melhor solução de conflitos. Durante o desenvolvimento deste trabalho, concentramos nossos esforços principalmente no desenvolvimento de algoritmos para a construção de sub-ontologias maximais, onde os conflitos não ocorram, bem como a ordenação desses conjuntos segundo critérios comuns discutidos na literatura. Tais estratégias foram implementadas em software e testadas utilizando dados gerados automaticamente e dados reais. / Knowledge reuse is a key task during any system development. Nevertheless, careless knowledge reuse may generate conflicting outcomes regarding the system goal, leading such systems to unpredictable behaviour. With that in mind, during this research we studied the consequences of knowledge reuse in ontologies based on description logics. We focused mainly on conflicts arising from ontology merging. We investigated and compared the features developed for this purpose on ontology development tools and how the theory field proposed to deal with the same issues. We developed both a logical and a software framework grouped into a process that aims to help the ontology designer solve conflicts arising from ontology merging. The process groups common tasks that are normally described separately. We believe that the unification of these approaches should result in a better solution for the merging conflicts. We concentrated our efforts during this work on building algorithms for building maximal sub-ontologies where such conflicts are non-existent as well as means for ordering such sets according to a few relevance criteria commonly described at the literature. Such algorithms were implemented and tested against automatically generated and real data.

Étant une représentation formelle et explicite des connaissances d'un domaine, les ontologies font régulièrement l'objet de nombreux changements et ont ainsi besoin d'être constamment adaptées pour notamment pouvoir être réutilisées et répondre aux nouveaux besoins. Leur réutilisation peut prendre différentes formes (évolution, alignement, fusion, etc.), et présente plusieurs verrous scientifiques. L'un des plus importants est la préservation de la consistance de l'ontologie lors de son changement. Afin d'y répondre, nous nous intéressons dans cette thèse à étudier les changements ontologiques et proposons un cadre formel capable de faire évoluer et de fusionner des ontologies sans affecter leur consistance. Premièrement, nous proposons TGGOnto (Typed Graph Grammars for Ontologies), un nouveau formalisme permettant la représentation des ontologies et leurs changements par les grammaires de graphes typés. Un couplage entre ces deux formalismes est défini afin de profiter des concepts des grammaires de graphes, notamment les NAC (Negative Application Conditions), pour la préservation de la consistance de l'ontologie adaptée.Deuxièmement, nous proposons EvOGG (Evolving Ontologies with Graph Grammars), une approche d'évolution d'ontologies qui se base sur le formalisme GGTOnto et traite les inconsistances d'une manière a priori. Nous nous intéressons aux ontologies OWL et nous traitons à la fois : (1) l'enrichissement d'ontologies en étudiant leur niveau structurel et (2) le peuplement d'ontologies en étudiant les changements qui affectent les individus et leurs assertions. L'approche EvOGG définit des changements ontologiques de différents types (élémentaires, composées et complexes) et assure leur implémentation par l'approche algébrique de transformation de graphes, SPO (Simple PushOut). Troisièmement, nous proposons GROM (Graph Rewriting for Ontology Merging), une approche de fusion d'ontologies capable d'éviter les redondances de données et de diminuer les conflits dans le résultat de fusion. L'approche proposée se décompose en trois étapes : (1) la recherche de similarité entre concepts en se basant sur des techniques syntaxiques, structurelles et sémantiques ; (2) la fusion d'ontologies par l'approche algébrique SPO ; (3) l'adaptation de l'ontologie globale résultante par le biais des règles de réécriture de graphes.Afin de valider les travaux menés dans cette thèse, nous avons développé plusieurs outils open source basés sur l'outil AGG (Attributed Graph Grammar). Ces outils ont été appliqués sur un ensemble d'ontologies, essentiellement sur celles développées dans le cadre du projet européen CCAlps (Creatives Companies in Alpine Space) qui a financé les travaux de cette thèse. / Ontologies are a formal and explicit knowledge representation. They represent a given domain by their concepts and axioms while creating a consensus between a user community. To satisfy the new requirements of the represented domain, ontologies have to be regularly updated and adapted to maintain their consistency. The adaptation may take different forms (evolution, alignment, merging, etc.), and represents several scientific challenges. One of the most important is to preserve the consistency of the ontology during the changes. To address this issue, we are interested in this thesis to study the ontology changes and we propose a formal framework that can evolve and merge ontologies without affecting their consistency.First we propose TGGOnto (Typed Graph Grammars for Ontologies), a new formalism for the representation of ontologies and their changes using typed graph grammars (TGG). A coupling between ontologies and TGG is defined in order to take advantage of the graph grammars concepts, such as the NAC (Negative Application Conditions), in preserving the adapted ontology consistency. Second, we propose EvOGG (Evolving Ontologies with Graph Grammars), an ontology evolution approach that is based on the TGGOnto formalism that avoids inconsistencies using an a priori approach. We focus on OWL ontologies and we address both : (1) ontology enrichment by studying their structural level and (2) ontology population by studying the changes affecting individuals and their assertions. EvOGG approach defines different types of ontology changes (elementary, composite and complex) and ensures their implementation by the algebraic approach of graph transformation, SPO (Single pushout).Third, we propose GROM (Graph Rewriting for Ontology Merging), an ontologies merging approach that avoids data redundancy and reduces conflict in the merged result. The proposed approach consists of three steps: (1) the similarity search between concepts based on syntactic, structural and semantic techniques; (2) the ontologies merging by the algebraic approach SPO; (3) the global ontology adaptation with graph rewriting rules.To validate our proposals, we have developed several open source tools based on AGG (Attributed Graph Grammar) tool. These tools were applied to a set of ontologies, mainly on those developed in the frame of the CCAlps (Creatives Companies in Alpine Space) European project, which funded this thesis work.

Orientador: Walter Moreira / Banca: Edberto Ferneda / Banca: Rogério Aparecido Sá Ramalho / Resumo: Aborda sobre as relações conceituais que se mostram presentes em todos os sistemas de organização do conhecimento. Ao organizar o conhecimento, delimita-se classes e cada classe desempenha relações com outras classes. Neste contexto, inserem-se a Classificação Decimal de Dewey (CDD) e as ontologias como forma de organizar o conhecimento físico e digital, respectivamente. Partindo-se do pressuposto de que os sistemas de organização do conhecimento se complementam, o objetivo geral desta pesquisa é o de comparar o modelo das relações conceituais presentes nos sistemas de classificação com o modelo de relações conceituais presentes nas ontologias. Para tanto, tomou-se como objeto de análise a classe 590 da CDD sobre Animais, e a BBC Wildlife Ontology e, assim, foram definidos como objetivos específicos: Compreender os tipos de relações conceituais e suas características; Analisar as relações conceituais da classe 590 da CDD; Investigar a consistência das relações conceituais na BBC Wildlife Ontology; Realizar análise comparativa sobre os tipos de relações conceituais identificados na CDD e na BBC Wildlife Ontology; Criar um modelo de ontologia que sintetize os dois sistemas de organização do conhecimento analisados para fins de sistematização. Para a realização desses objetivos adotou-se, em síntese, os seguintes procedimentos metodológicos: 1) coleta de dados a partir da literatura da área; 2) análise das relações conceituais da classe 590 da CDD; 3) análise das relações concei... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: It deals with the conceptual relations that are present in all Knowledge Organization Systems. When knowledge is organized, classes are delimited and each class performs relationships with other classes. The Dewey Decimal Classification (CDD) and the ontologies are inserted in this context as a way of organizing the physical and digital knowledge, respectively. Assuming that the Knowledge Systems Organization complement each other, the general objective of this research is to compare the model of the conceptual relations present in the classification systems with the model of conceptual relations present in the ontologies. Therefore, the CDD class 590 about Animals and the BBC Wildlife Ontology were taken as the object of analysis and thus were defined as specific objectives. To understand the types of conceptual relationships and their characteristics; to analyze the conceptual relationships of class 590 of the CDD; To investigate the consistency of conceptual relationships in the BBC Wildlife Ontology; To conduct a comparative analysis of the types of conceptual relationships identified in the CDD and the BBC Wildlife Ontology; To create an ontology model that synthesizes the two Knowledge Organization Systems analyzed for systematization purposes. In order to achieve these objectives, the following methodological procedures were adopted: 1) data collection from the literature of the area; 2) analysis of the conceptual relationships of class 590 from CDD; 3) analysis of con... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

Les services informatiques, et particulièrement les services sur le Web, permettent le traitement ou l'échange d'informations. Leur composition ainsi que la construction de workflows à partir de services permettent la réalisation de tâches complexes. Toutefois, seules des informations utiles à leur gestion informatique (stockage, exécution, etc.) sont spécifiées dans les langages de description de services ou de compositions de services tels que WSDL, BPEL ou XPDL. Ces descriptions, essentiellement syntaxiques, ne sont pas suffisamment riches pour permettre une gestion complexe supportant la découverte, l'interopérabilité ou l'adaptativité de services au niveau sémantique. En effet, ces descriptions ne permettent pas de lier explicitement les services informatiques et les compositions qu'elles définissent aux fonctions et aux processus implémentés ainsi qu'aux concepts manipulés. Dans les domaines de l'ingénierie par exemple, l'activité de composition de services informatiques reste traditionnellement à la charge des ingénieurs. L'absence de sémantique explicite rend les services et workflows informatiques difficilement compréhensibles, réutilisables et composables pour les ingénieurs du domaine d'intérêt qui n'ont pas contribué à leur conception et ayant des connaissances techniques et informatiques en général limitées. Ces ingénieurs restent ainsi dépendants des développeurs de logiciels pour l'utilisation ou la composition de services informatiques. Pour apporter une solution aux problèmes évoqués, de récentes approches ont été proposées. Cependant, leurs mécanismes d'enrichissement sémantique ne séparent pas la partie syntaxique, utile au stockage ou à l'exécution, de la partie sémantique, utile à la découverte ou à la composition. En outre, ces mécanismes ne fournissent aucune classification hiérarchique ou relationnelle selon la sémantique des services informatiques. Pour remédier à ces limitations, nous proposons une approche basée sur la définition d'ontologies de services (conceptualisations partagées) et d'indexations sémantiques. Notre proposition s'appuie sur une architecture de persistance centrée autour des bases de données à base ontologique pour stocker et indexer les différents services ainsi que leurs compositions. La mise en oeuvre de notre approche consiste en un prototype logiciel implantant les concepts de service et de workflow sémantiques permettant de stocker, de rechercher, de remplacer, de réutiliser les services et les workflows informatiques existants et d'en construire de nouveaux de manière incrémentale. Ces travaux sont validés en étant appliqués au domaine de la modélisation géologique et de l'ingénierie pétrolière et plus particulièrement à l'interprétation sismique.

<p>Query composition is an often complicated and cumbersome task for persons performing a literature search. This thesis is part of a project which aims to present possible queries to the user in form of natural language expressions. The thesis presents methods of ontology slice generation. Slices are parts of ontologies connecting two concepts along all possible paths between them. Those slices hence represent all relevant queries connecting the concepts and the paths can in a later step be translated into natural language expressions. Methods of slice alignment, connecting slices that originate from different ontologies, are also presented. The thesis concludes with some example scenarios and comparisons to related work.</p>

<p>Today, scientists in various biomedical fields rely on biological data sources in their research. Large amounts of information concerning, for instance, genes, proteins and diseases are publicly available on the internet, and are used daily for acquiring knowledge. Typically, biological data is spread across multiple sources, which has led to heterogeneity and redundancy.</p><p>The current thesis suggests grouping as one way of computationally managing biological data. A conceptual model for this purpose is presented, which takes properties specific for biological data into account. The model defines sub-tasks and key issues where multiple solutions are possible, and describes what approaches for these that have been used in earlier work. Further, an implementation of this model is described, as well as test cases which show that the model is indeed useful.</p><p>Since the use of ontologies is relatively new in the management of biological data, the main focus of the thesis is on how semantic similarity of ontological annotations can be used for grouping. The results of the test cases show for example that the implementation of the model, using Gene Ontology, is capable of producing groups of data entries with similar molecular functions.</p>

Query composition is an often complicated and cumbersome task for persons performing a literature search. This thesis is part of a project which aims to present possible queries to the user in form of natural language expressions. The thesis presents methods of ontology slice generation. Slices are parts of ontologies connecting two concepts along all possible paths between them. Those slices hence represent all relevant queries connecting the concepts and the paths can in a later step be translated into natural language expressions. Methods of slice alignment, connecting slices that originate from different ontologies, are also presented. The thesis concludes with some example scenarios and comparisons to related work.