System and method for automatically refining ontology within specific context

A method for automatically refining ontology within a specific context, comprising steps of:

• a) discovering a semantics relationship conflict existing between an original ontology schema and application data;
• b) transforming the original ontology schema into a refined ontology schema by transforming an original relationship property in the original ontology schema into a new relationship class in the refined ontology schema,
• c) creating at least two new relationship properties under the new relationship class based upon a portion of the data schema that caused the semantics relationship conflict to exist;
• d) creating a new mapping between the refined ontology schema and a data schema of the application data;
• and
• e) automatically populating at least two new relationship properties with data from a portion of the application data that caused the semantics relationship conflict to occur.

A system for converting application data, stored according to an application data schema, into ontologically-organized data stored according to an ontology schema, with the ontology schema including a plurality of defined relationship classes, with the ontology schema further including a plurality of defined potential relationships, with the ontologically-organized data including a plurality of relationship class instances respectively corresponding to defined relationship classes of the ontology schema, and with the ontologically-organized data further including a plurality of relationship instances respectively relating pairs of relationship class instances, the system comprising:

• a rich context extractor for automatically discovering a duplicate-relationship-instance conflict occurring between a pair of conflicted relationship class instances, the duplicate-relationship-instance conflict is considered to occur when conversion of the application data into ontologically-organized data would lead to at least two identical relationship instances between the pair of conflicted relationship class instances;
• and
• an ontology refiner for resolving the duplicate-relationship-instance conflict by automatically refining the ontology schema into a refined ontology schema by automatically adding a new defined relationship class to the ontology schema based upon a portion of the application data that caused the duplicate-relationship-instance conflict to occur;
• wherein:
• the ontology refiner further resolves the duplicate-relationship-instance conflict by automatically populating at least two new relationship class instances in the ontologically-organized data organized under the new defined relationship class of the refined ontology schema with data from a portion of the application data that caused the duplicate-relationship-instance conflict to occur.