Complexity metrics for ontology based information

An ontology defines technical terms and shows interrelationships between terms for particular application areas. XML-based standards such as OWL and DAML provide mechanisms to produce XML based ontologies. Ontologies are used in service matching and dynamic web service composition, and are heavily used in bioinformatics and genomics to characterise the structure of living things. Our research focuses on complexity metrics for ontologies. These complexity metrics are compiled from semantic relationships in an ontology. These metrics will help select the best ontologies in several application areas, including bioinformatics and genomics.

Keywords: ontologies, ontology based systems, semantic web, metrics, complexity metrics, bioinformatics, genomics