Patent ID: 7912826
Filing Date: 2011-03-22
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. An ontology construction supporting apparatus comprising: an ontology information storing unit that stores one or more ontologies, each of the ontologies containing classes obtained by systematically classifying knowledge or a concept, and being capable of correlating data written according to a property as an attribute of the respective class with each of the classes; a data item extracting unit that extracts a data item from target data for an ontology construction accompanied by a plurality of data items; a candidate property extracting unit that extracts candidate properties corresponding to the data items, from the one or more ontologies; a candidate class extracting unit that extracts candidate classes each of which has one or more of the candidate properties, from the one or more ontologies; a primary property-selection determining unit that determines properties corresponding to the data items related to the target data for an ontology construction from a reference class determined according to the number of times of appearance among the candidate classes and the reference class that is extraction classes of the properties as ontology candidates, from a reference class determined according to priority levels among the candidate classes; and a secondary property-selection determining unit that, in the case when there is a data item for which a corresponding property has not been determined is undetermined by the primary property-selection determining unit, extracts classes each of which has one or more of the properties that have been determined by the primary property-selection determining unit by using the each class determined by the primary property-selection determining unit as the reference class, extracts, from the extracted classes, a class having a property corresponding to the data item for which the corresponding property has not been determined data items that have not been brought into correspondence by the primary property-selection determining unit, and determines a property that corresponds to the data item for which the corresponding property has not been determined data items that have not been brought into correspondence by the primary property-selection determining unit and an extraction class of the property, as ontology candidates.