The alignment of ontologies is the backbone of semantic interoperability. It facilitates the import of data from an ontology to another, translating queries between them or merging ontologies in a global one. However, these services cannot be guaranteed throughout the life cycle of the ontology. The problem is that the evolution of mapped ontologies may be affected and make obsolete the relationship of the mapping. Inspired by belief revision theory, the authors identify and formalize the constraints and requirements of the alignment evolution problem. Then they give an orchestration of designed operations to resolve the problem. The satisfaction of these constraints and requirements is discussed for each operation showing its strengths and weaknesses. Finally, the authors conduct an experimental process with the objective to show the limits of alignment evolution methods and ontology matching tools when dealing with alignment evolution problem highlighting the emergency to invest in dedicated methods.
Limits in the Revision Theory