Combining OWL ontologies using -Connections

The standardization of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) leaves (at least) two crucial issues for Web-based ontologies unsatisfactorily resolved, namely how to represent and reason with multiple distinct, but linked ontologies, and how to enable effective knowledge reuse and sharing on the Semantic Web. s paper, we present a solution for these fundamental problems based on E -Connections. We aim to use E -Connections to provide modelers with suitable means for developing Web ontologies in a modular way and to provide an alternative to the owl:imports construct. uch motivation, we present in this paper a syntactic and semantic extension of the Web Ontology language that covers E -Connections of OWL-DL ontologies. We show how to use such an extension as an alternative to the owl:imports construct in many modeling situations. We investigate different combinations of the logics SHIN ( D ) , SHON ( D ) and SHIO ( D ) for which it is possible to design and implement reasoning algorithms, well-suited for optimization. y, we provide support for E -Connections in both an ontology editor, SWOOP, and an OWL reasoner, Pellet.