Study on Enterprise Ontology Evolution Method Based on Minimal Ripple-effect

Ontology evolution has an effect on services relying on ontology, and makes them revised and redeployed. Facing the same change demands, different evolution implementation methods have greatly different influence scope. This article provides an ontology evolution algorithm based on minimal ripple-effect (MRE). Ontology adjacency matrix and reachability matrix based on ontology graph model are established. In-depth analysisand quantification for the ripple-effects at node-group level and node level in ontology evolution are carried out by matrix transformation and operation. The MRE algorithm transforms ontology evolution process into the process of calculating shortest graph path. It searches a change path with smallest effect-value to decrease the influence scope of ontology evolution. The actual application and demonstration indicate that the MRE algorithm costs a much smaller graph searching time and has a much smaller change influence scope than current algorithm.