|
|
We propose ontology views as a necessary mechanism to support the ubiquitous and collaborative utilization of ontologies. Different agents (human or computational) require different organization of data and different vocabularies to suit their information seeking needs, but the lack of flexible tools to customize and evolve ontologies makes it impossible to find and use the right nuggets of information in such environments. When using an ontology, an agent should be able to introduce new classes using high level constraints, and define contexts to enable efficient, effective and secure information searching. In this paper we present a framework that enables users to design customized ontology views and show that the views are the right mechanism to enhance the usability of ontologies.