THE ONTOLINGUA SERVER - A TOOL FOR COLLABORATIVE ONTOLOGY CONSTRUCTION

Reusable ontologies are becoming increasingly important for tasks such as information integration, knowledge-level interoperation and knowle dge-base development. We have developed a set of tools and services to support the process of achieving consensus on commonly shared ontolog ies by geographically distributed groups. These tools make use of the World Wide Web to enable wide access and provide users with the abilit y to publish, browse, create and edit ontologies stored on an ontology server. Users can quickly assemble a new ontology from a library of m odules. We discuss how our system was constructed, how it exploits exi sting protocols and browsing tools, and our experience supporting hund reds of users. We describe applications using our tools to achieve con sensus on ontologies and to integrate information. (C) 1997 Academic P ress Limited.