Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

Discerning and Characterising Types of Competency Questions for Ontologies

C. Maria Keet, Zubeida Casmod Khan

TL;DR

This work addresses the lack of structured guidance for competency questions in ontology engineering by introducing the Questions for Ontologies (QuO) framework, which classifies CQs into five types: Scoping (SCQ), Validating (VCQ), Foundational (FCQ), Relationship (RCQ), and Metaproperty (MpCQ). It formalizes the distinct purposes and constituents of each type, provides a practical diagrammatic representation, and demonstrates their use via a coffee-domain use case aligned with the NeOn methodology. To promote reuse and research, the authors introduce ROCQS, a FAIR-compliant repository containing 438 CQs categorized by type, with plans for future expansion and tooling support. The work aims to enhance clarity and effectiveness of CQs in ontology development, enabling better scoping, validation, foundational alignment, relational analysis, and metaproperty classification, with potential impact on ontology quality and interoperability.

Abstract

Competency Questions (CQs) are widely used in ontology development by guiding, among others, the scoping and validation stages. However, very limited guidance exists for formulating CQs and assessing whether they are good CQs, leading to issues such as ambiguity and unusable formulations. To solve this, one requires insight into the nature of CQs for ontologies and their constituent parts, as well as which ones are not. We aim to contribute to such theoretical foundations in this paper, which is informed by analysing questions, their uses, and the myriad of ontology development tasks. This resulted in a first Model for Competency Questions, which comprises five main types of CQs, each with a different purpose: Scoping (SCQ), Validating (VCQ), Foundational (FCQ), Relationship (RCQ), and Metaproperty (MpCQ) questions. This model enhances the clarity of CQs and therewith aims to improve on the effectiveness of CQs in ontology development, thanks to their respective identifiable distinct constituent elements. We illustrate and evaluate them with a user story and demonstrate where which type can be used in ontology development tasks. To foster use and research, we created an annotated repository of 438 CQs, the Repository of Ontology Competency QuestionS (ROCQS), incorporating an existing CQ dataset and new CQs and CQ templates, which further demonstrate distinctions among types of CQs.

Discerning and Characterising Types of Competency Questions for Ontologies

TL;DR

This work addresses the lack of structured guidance for competency questions in ontology engineering by introducing the Questions for Ontologies (QuO) framework, which classifies CQs into five types: Scoping (SCQ), Validating (VCQ), Foundational (FCQ), Relationship (RCQ), and Metaproperty (MpCQ). It formalizes the distinct purposes and constituents of each type, provides a practical diagrammatic representation, and demonstrates their use via a coffee-domain use case aligned with the NeOn methodology. To promote reuse and research, the authors introduce ROCQS, a FAIR-compliant repository containing 438 CQs categorized by type, with plans for future expansion and tooling support. The work aims to enhance clarity and effectiveness of CQs in ontology development, enabling better scoping, validation, foundational alignment, relational analysis, and metaproperty classification, with potential impact on ontology quality and interoperability.

Abstract

Competency Questions (CQs) are widely used in ontology development by guiding, among others, the scoping and validation stages. However, very limited guidance exists for formulating CQs and assessing whether they are good CQs, leading to issues such as ambiguity and unusable formulations. To solve this, one requires insight into the nature of CQs for ontologies and their constituent parts, as well as which ones are not. We aim to contribute to such theoretical foundations in this paper, which is informed by analysing questions, their uses, and the myriad of ontology development tasks. This resulted in a first Model for Competency Questions, which comprises five main types of CQs, each with a different purpose: Scoping (SCQ), Validating (VCQ), Foundational (FCQ), Relationship (RCQ), and Metaproperty (MpCQ) questions. This model enhances the clarity of CQs and therewith aims to improve on the effectiveness of CQs in ontology development, thanks to their respective identifiable distinct constituent elements. We illustrate and evaluate them with a user story and demonstrate where which type can be used in ontology development tasks. To foster use and research, we created an annotated repository of 438 CQs, the Repository of Ontology Competency QuestionS (ROCQS), incorporating an existing CQ dataset and new CQs and CQ templates, which further demonstrate distinctions among types of CQs.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 13 sections, 5 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Model for Competency Questions
  4. Preliminary analysis: purposes and core elements
  5. Purposes of CQs
  6. Components of CQs
  7. Descriptions and definitions of the types of CQs
  8. Usage of the Model for Competency Questions
  9. Broad intended use: examples
  10. Exemplary CQs, 'almost CQs', faulty CQs, and answerability
  11. The Repository of Ontology Competency QuestionS (ROCQS)
  12. Discussion
  13. Conclusion

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: Illustration of the key aspects of SCQs and VCQs for ontologies, in EER notation with annotation.
  • Figure 2: Illustration of the key aspects of FCQs, which are used to interrogate an entity to be aligned to an entity in a foundational ontology.
  • Figure 3: Illustration of the types of RCQs for ontologies and their salient aspects.
  • Figure 4: MpCQs for ontologies in EER notation, annotated with typical examples.
  • Figure 5: The NeON methodology annotated where diverse types of CQ can be used for various tasks in the process.

Theorems & Definitions (6)

  • Definition 1: Competency Question
  • Definition 2: Scoping CQ
  • Definition 3: Validation CQ
  • Definition 4: Foundational CQ
  • Definition 5: Relationship CQ
  • Definition 6: Metaproperty CQ