Challenges Faced by Ontology Matching Techniques: Case Study of the OAEI Datasets

The aim of this study is to review some of the most successful recent techniques in ontology matching and to lay down pending challenges that need to be addressed in this area. Ontologies are essential for the realization of the semantic web, which in turn relies on the ability of systems to identify and exploit relationships that exist between and within ontologies. As ontologies can be used to represent different domains, there is a high need for efficient ontology matching techniques that can allow information to be easily shared between different heterogeneous systems. In this paper, six systems that obtained overall good performance in the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI) for the year 2008 and the year 2009 are analyzed based on their underlying techniques, datasets, and matching results. According to the analysis carried out, it is found that although some systems work well for dataset representing a given domain, the same system does not perform well for datasets representing other domains. To assist further research in this area, techniques that work well for particular domains are highlighted and areas for cross-domain ontology matching that still require attention are discussed with recommendations based on lessons learnt from the techniques described.